5 Stories from Europe You May Have Missed + 1
1. Russian Plane Hits Birds, Makes Emergency Landing In Cornfield
The crew of a Ural Airlines aircraft is being hailed as heroes after making an emergency landing in a farmer's field near Moscow with no fatalities among the 233 people on board.
The airline said on August 15 that one of its Airbus A321 aircraft made an emergency landing in a cornfield near Zhukovsky airport on the outskirts of Moscow after birds were sucked into its engines.
The Health Ministry said 23 people had suffered injuries, but that nobody had been killed in the accident.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-plane-emergency-landing-cornfield-moscow/30110937.html
2. Norway halts Amazon fund donation in dispute with Brazil
Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.
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After weeks of tense negotiations with Norway and Germany, the Bolsonaro government unilaterally closed the Amazon Fund’s steering committee on Thursday. The fund has been central to international efforts to curb deforestation although its impact is contested.
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According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the government agency that monitors deforestation, the rate increased by 278% in the year to July, resulting in the destruction of about 870 square miles.
link
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/norway-halts-amazon-fund-donation-dispute-brazil-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro
3. Italy government feud: PM Conte slams minister Salvini as 'disloyal'
Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte accused interior minister Matteo Salvini of “disloyalty” and an “obsession with blocking immigration” in an open letter published on social media — intensifying the feud within the ruling coalition.
Conte, who does not belong to any party, used the case of a migrant rescue boat refused entry to Italy’s ports by Salvini to settle scores with the Lega Nord leader who had called a motion of no-confidence in the government.
Salvini said last week that his right-wing party would no longer support the current alliance with the Five-Star Movement.
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5-Star and the opposition Democratic Party (PD) have stalled any debate in the senate of the no-confidence motion and many politicians are now discussing forming their own coalition that would sideline Salvini.
link
https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/15/italy-government-feud-pm-conte-slams-minister-salvini-as-disloyal
4. Greenland: rising temperatures risk releasing atomic waste from Cold War US base
There are fears nuclear waste buried underneath the ice in Greenland could escape because of rising global temperatures.
Former US army base ‘Camp Century’ was built in the late 1950s as an Arctic research laboratory.
Accommodating up to 200 soldiers, the Cold War era-bunker in northwestern Greenland was also home to an atomic reactor and a top secret project to test and deploy nuclear missiles.
Code named ‘Project Iceworm’, when the US finally decommissioned the base in 1967, large amounts of nuclear waste, raw sewage and other toxic material were left behind.
link
https://www.euronews.com/2016/09/26/greenland-rising-temperatures-risk-releasing-atomic-waste-from-cold-war-us-base
5. Uzbek President Shuts Down Notorious 'House Of Torture" Prison
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirzioyev has ordered the closure of the Jaslyk prison in the Central Asian country's northwest, an institution that has long been associated with torture and human rights abuses.
The Interior Ministry called the presidential order to shut down the infamous facility "a truly historic decision that was made to boost the effectiveness of the correctional impact on convicts...as well to promote the country's positive image abroad."
Situated in the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, which is known for its severely cold winters and hot, dry summers, Jaslyk earned nicknames such as "The House of Torture" and "The Place of No Return."
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The prison was opened by former authoritarian President Islam Karimov at a former Soviet military base to incarcerate thousands of people arrested following deadly 1999 bombings in the capital, Tashkent, that authorities blamed on "religious extremists."
link
https://www.rferl.org/a/uzbek-president-shuts-down-notorious-house-of-torture-prison/30093031.html
+1- Unflagging Protest: Belarus's Opposition Inspired By A Pensioner And Her Outlawed Banner
MINSK -- Holding a bamboo pole with a red-striped white banner, the banned flag of the first independent Belarusian state, she faces a line of black-clad police officers staring down from a flight of stone steps.
The 2006 photograph transformed Nina Bahinskaya, now a pensioner and great-grandmother, into a celebrity of sorts among activists -- an endangered species in Belarus, ruled since 1994 by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who tolerates little dissent in the nation of some 9.5 million.
"Today, some may laugh at it, some may dismiss it, and some may not pay any attention at all. But in the future, that image will still be there," said Zmitser Dashkevich, leader of the opposition group Malady Front (Youth Front). "That photograph of Nina Bahinskaya with the flag will be part of Belarus's recent history. Not all these political parties, but Nina Bahinskaya with the flag in her hand."
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Bahinskaya rarely heads out for demonstrations without her flag, the white-red-white symbol of the short-lived Belarusian People's Republic, which existed for about a year in 1918-19. It was also the official flag of modern Belarus for the country's first five years of independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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"Up until 2014, they would confiscate flags, then they started to snap them in two and take them away. But from 2016, the coffers were empty, I guess, so they stopped confiscating the flags, and started issuing fines instead," Bahinskaya said with a smile, holding a tiny first republic flag that she says rarely leaves her side.
link
https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-flag-protest-bahinskaya-pensioner-opposition-lukashenko/30087244.html
Bahinskaya brandishes Belarus's illegal flag in Minsk in 2016
Nina Bahinskaya facing down a line of policemen in 2006
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