Italy’s Interior Ministry has hit out at the UN’s criticism of its anti-migrant proposals, suggesting the body focuses on solving the emergency in Venezuela instead of “electoral campaigning in Italy.”

Ministry officials made the barbed remark on Sunday, after a letter by the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights urged a reversal of the measures that block entry to Italian ports for any NGO vessels attempting to dock with migrants. It will also allow the ministry to prevent any ships deemed to be a security concern from entering Italy’s territorial waters, and give powers to issue fines of up to $6,145 for each migrant transported.

“The hope is that the authoritative UN dedicates its energies to the humanitarian emergency in Venezuela rather than engage in electoral campaigning in Italy,” the officials said. They added that the proposed measures were “necessary and urgent” to Italy’s security and would be likely approved during a Cabinet meeting on Monday.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights voiced its concern with the proposed measures in a letter dated May 15 and released on Saturday. In it, the body said Italy’s proposals equated to another “political attempt to criminalize” search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean and fostered a “climate of hostility and xenophobia” towards migrants. It warned that by preventing such vessels from porting in Italy, it violated human rights for migrants enshrined in conventions Rome has signed up to.

However, the ministry said that fines were already present in Italy’s legal code and was merely being updated. Rome has long accused the European Union of turning the country into a “refugee camp” with other countries failing to take on the migrants, leaving Italy with the burden.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is pushing for greater border security as EU member states prepare to go to the polls on Thursday in tightly-contested European Parliament elections, where right-wing and anti-immigration parties are looking to make strong gains. To this end, Salvini has joined forces with France’s Le Pen to form the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group. The bloc includes Austria’s Freedom Party, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom from the Netherlands.

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This month, HBO has launched its new historical drama ‘Chernobyl’, looking back at one of the worst nuclear disasters in history – but for Ukrainians, it’s also a chilling reminder that history could repeat itself.

US cable giant HBO is reviving the 33-year-old memory of one of the worst – and the most infamous – nuclear incidents in the world. It overlays history with personal drama and intrigue in its fresh mini-series – but what the general viewer might not realize is that it’s too early for Ukraine to consign nuclear problems to history and fiction. The name ‘Chernobyl’ is being brought up again in reference to the woes plaguing Ukrainian atomic energy today.

Ukrainian nuclear power plants have become a “time bomb,” Rada member Sergey Shakhov recently said. Reactors – some of them near densely populated cities – are aging without proper oversight or funding, contracts with Russia are broken, and homegrown nuclear experts are fleeing to find better opportunities abroad.

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Emergencies have plagued at least two major Ukrainian nuclear power plants, causing a series of stoppages in operations in the past three years. Some reactors at the Khmelnitsky power plant (located in a city with almost 40,000 inhabitants) had to be halted at least three times since July 2016. A main pump malfunction at the Zaporozhye power plant (close to the regional center and its 750,000+ inhabitants) forced one of its six reactors to stop in September 2018, triggering a local panic. Soon after that, two more reactors were consecutively stopped for planned repairs. They still remain halted, though one of them was supposed to be restarted early in 2019.

Those are just the instances which received attention in the media, revealed either by MPs or by nuclear plant operators.

The situation is an ecological disaster in the making, Shakhov warned in an interview to the TV channel NewsOne. Ukrainian nuclear power plants, he says, have become a “mini-Chernobyl.”

But how did a country that relies on nuclear power for 60 percent of its electricity allow its power plants to degrade so far?

Russia could help, but Kiev doesn’t want it

Ukrainian nuclear facilities were built in the Soviet Union, and for the past decades were maintained in collaboration with Russia. But after the 2014 coup, new Kiev authorities have made every effort to break up links with Moscow, including severing the nuclear cooperation agreement in 2017.

That deprived Ukraine of Russian expertise, something the aging reactors desperately need, says Stanislav Mitrakhovich, an expert on energy policy in the National Energy Security Fund (NESF) and in the Financial University under the government of the Russian Federation.

“Many power blocks are already quite old, their resources were already prolonged according to a special procedure, but this extension cannot be done infinitely. And it is not too easy to do without the help of the Russian specialist who were previously responsible for these tasks.”

Ukraine could come have up with a solution by itself, but “it should have started 10 years ago,” says Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky, the director of the Kiev Center of Political Research and Conflict Studies.

“Of course Kiev doesn’t have the money to repair and upgrade the reactors, but there are still ways to solve this. One of the most efficient ones lies in Moscow, in the Kurchatov nuclear research institute. But considering the relations, Ukraine won’t go there for help.”

The problem has fallen victim to Kiev’s politics. “Ukrainian authorities have been doing everything with political gain in mind, and that is one of the reasons things have been malfunctioning and additional risks were created for the reactors… Equipment has to be checked and maintained, and that, again, means cooperating with Russia,” says another Ukrainian political scientist, Aleksandr Dudchak.

The immediate danger

Despite the apocalyptic buzz, predicting a new Chernobyl is taking things too far, Ukrainian experts believe. The danger is no less real, however, even if it’s less dramatic in scale. The reactors might not be about to melt down and send a massive radioactive cloud billowing into the atmosphere, like Chernobyl did – instead, they will simply stop working, plunging large parts of Ukraine into a blackout.

“If Ukraine keeps to the [reactor lifespan] schedule – time’s up, switch off – it would be left without half or more generator assemblies. Sixty percent of our energy comes from nuclear power plants – this means we would have a blackout. Of course, we can’t have that, so various fictitious means are being used to prolong the lifespan,” Pogrebinsky says.

Still, the probability of a major nuclear incident – not quite the scale of Chernobyl, but comparable to the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania – has been assessed at 80% within five years by researchers in a 2016 paper published in the Energy Research & Social Science academic journal.

The deadline to solve this problem is fast approaching, believes Dmitry Marunich, co-chair of the Ukrainian Energy Strategies Fund.

“There is no money, there are no contracts, the contract with [Russian nuclear energy giant] Rosatom has been broken – this is a dead-end situation that Ukrainian authorities will have to solve, and solve without delay, because under certain conditions we could have energy shortages, within five to seven to 10 years.”

International financial institutions have been supporting Ukraine with funds, but amid the more pressing day-to-day needs and the rampant corruption of the Poroshenko presidency, their effect on the restoration of dilapidated power plants is yet to be seen.

Basic incompatibilities

One of the main risks stems from the use of ill-fitting US-made fuel rods. Some Ukrainian power plants are fueled by fuel rods produced by the US nuclear contractor Westinghouse. They are shaped differently than those produced in Russia, and incompatibilities have caused problems before.

“Westinghouse fuel was first used in Ukrainian nuclear power plants in 2012, and even before the first fuel cycle was over it became evident they were not compatible, and the fuel assemblies had to be extracted,” Boris Martsinkevich, editor-in-chief of the Geoenergetics magazine, told RT.

Westinghouse fuel deliveries were restarted in 2015, and it’s unclear whether it’s been made more compatible with the Soviet-built equipment. If they were not, the fuel is “fully capable of halting the work of the nuclear power plants,” even though it won’t cause any mass hazardous incident.

Ukraine’s ailing economy, apart from directly depriving power plants of necessary maintenance and upgrade funds, has caused a ‘brain drain’ as collateral damage.

“Experts working at Ukrainian nuclear power plants are leaving. The situation in the country is unstable, and it’s been getting worse for five years… a lot of experts have moved out of the country, including to Russia and China, as well as other countries. Soon there’ll be no-one left to maintain the power plants,” Dudchak warns.

Irresponsible waste storage

Back when Ukraine was cooperating with Russia, Rosatom was contracted to take back and recycle spent fuel rods. Westinghouse doesn’t do that, so Kiev partnered with another US-based company – Holtec International – to build a shelter for the waste in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, effectively turning it into a radioactive dump.

The shelter, projected to go operational in late 2019 or early 2020, envisions storing nuclear waste in a concrete structure above ground, without a plan to recycle it in the future, which experts believe to be irresponsible.

“Thanks to the authorities that came to power after the coup, a site is being built in Ukraine with the help of American partners, which will store nuclear power plant waste without recycling, on the surface – that’s an insane idea,” says Dudchak.

“It looks like a technological and safety experiment at the cost of Ukrainians,” Mitrakhovich agrees. “But Americans promise that it will be safe.”

Promises from overseas aside, it’s ultimately up to the newly-elected authorities in Kiev whether Ukraine’s nuclear power industry gets a new lease on life or ends up being the plot fodder for another HBO show decades later.

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Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will be on the ticket for the presidential election in Argentina, which will be held in October, the former president of the country announced, confirming long-running speculation.

Kirchner, who served as Argentina’s head of state for two terms between 2007 and 2015, will be seeking the office of vice president. The leading person on the ticket is Alberto Fernandez, who was chief staff in the government of Kirchner’s late husband and predecessor at the helm of the nation, Nestor Kirchner. Fernandez retained the office for part of Cristina Kirchner’s first term.

The ex-president said she and Fernandez have their differences, but also have known each other for over two decades and can work together to win the election and govern the country again, she said in a video published on Saturday.

The left-wing duo will try to unseat incumbent President Mauricio Macri, whose prospects for re-election are undermined by a staggering economy and failure to keep inflation under control. Kirchner didn’t run against Macri in 2015, as Argentina’s constitution does not allow three consecutive terms as president or vice president to be held.

The announcement came days after Kirshner presented a 600-page book of personal stories, which many observers expected to be timed with her declaration.

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French journalists are being threatened with jail time for reporting on leaked documents revealing the country’s complicity in the Saudi-led war in Yemen after they refused to answer questions from anti-terror police.

“They want to make an example of us because it’s the first time in France that there have been leaks like this,” Geoffrey Livolsi, co-founder of investigative news outlet Disclose, told the Intercept, referring to the classified Directorate of Military Intelligence briefing, meant for President Emmanuel Macron’s eyes only, that revealed the government had lied to the public about how the weapons it was selling would be used.

Livolsi, his Disclose co-founder Mathias Destal, and Radio France reporter Benoît Collombat could face up to five years in prison and a €75,000 fine for merely handling classified documents without authorization under a 2009 law that prohibits “attacks on national defense secrets” after the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), France’s domestic intelligence service, accused them of “compromising the secrecy of national defense.”

The DGSI hauled them in for questioning this week after a story they published last month based on the leaked document showed top government officials were fully aware that military equipment they sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – including laser-guided missile systems and tanks – was being used “offensively” in Yemen in violation of a 2014 arms treaty.

The journalists refused to answer questions about their sources and work, invoking their right to remain silent and instead proffering a statement in support of public interest journalism. While France does have a law protecting the freedom of the press, it does not apply to “national defense secrets,” and there are no exceptions – not even for the public interest.

The French government appears to be out for blood, according to Disclose lawyer Virginie Marquet, who pointed to statements from Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly accusing the outlet of violating “all the rules and laws of our country.” And even if the government ultimately chooses not to prosecute, the damage has been done.

“There’s a chilling effect,” Marquet told the Intercept. “It’s a warning for every journalist – don’t go into that kind of subject, don’t investigate this information.”

At least 36 French media outlets signed a statement condemning the persecution of the journalists last month. Macron’s government cracked down on dissident journalism in 2018 with a law allowing the government to shut down any news agency deemed to be under “foreign influence” four months before an election.

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Heinz-Christian Strache has resigned as Austria’s vice chancellor a day after German media reported that he and a close aide discussed potentially illegal quid pro quo arrangements with a suspected Russian business woman.

Speaking to the media on Saturday, Strache said he has submitted his resignation letter to Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Strache also stepped down as leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), the junior member of the Austrian ruling coalition.

He insisted that he and his fellow party member Johann Gudenus, who took part in the controversial meeting, were victims of a long-running smear campaign, which culminated in the release of the “illegally recorded” footage.

“It was political assassination,” the politician stated.

The story, broken by Spiegel and Suddeutscher Zeitung on Friday, cited a secret recording of a July 2017 meeting, which was leaked to the two outlets.

The video showed Strache and Gudenus talking to a woman who was described as a “niece of a Russian oligarch”  by the outlets (Strache clarified that she was in fact Russian-speaking Latvian citizen). According to the leaked information, the politicians and the woman discussed the possibility of her buying a majority share in an Austrian tabloid newspaper and using it as a platform to support the FPO in the 2017 national election. Once in power, the party reportedly would help the woman’s construction business to obtain government contracts in Austria. The participants of the meeting also discussed ways to potentially circumvent Austria’s transparency laws for party donations by using a charity as an intermediary, according to the exposés.

During the media conference, Strache insisted his party didn’t benefit in any way from the meeting and that he never met the woman after that. He added that the nature of the conversations has been misrepresented by the German journalists.

Strache said he was sorry that his actions resulted in a scandal and apologized to anyone who may be offended by him.

He did stress, however, that those behind it were “waiting for two years” to release the footage. Notably, the publication comes days ahead of the European Parliament election in Austria. The FPO was expected to be among the beneficiaries of the pan-European swing to the right, with polls projecting that they would win around 23 percent of the vote, compared to 19.7 percent in 2014.

Strache announced he will take legal action to defend his name, but would not go into detail regarding what exactly he plans to do. Meanwhile, Transport Minister Norbert Hofer is to replace him as both party leader and vice chancellor, provided that the coalition survives the unfolding scandal.

The scandal has sparked a wave of public outrage leading to a spontaneous massive protest in Vienna, outside of the Chancellor’s Office, which was joined by some 5,000 people.

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Russia will respond ‘reciprocally’ to the US sanctions placed on Chechen special police unit Terek, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said, slamming Washington’s move as ‘destructive.’

“Obviously, the principle of reciprocity applies here,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, adding that Washington’s recent actions against Chechnya’s Terek Special Rapid Response Team will trigger “necessary countermeasures.” 

Peskov did not specify what steps are being considered.

On Thursday, the US Treasury Department included the rapid-response unit – a local equivalent of a SWAT team – into the anti-Russian sanctions list. The sanctions also personally apply to the team’s commander.

It was done under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, which is an extension of an earlier US law adopted to target Moscow. The legislation allows the US government to sanction anyone it sees as complicit in violating human rights anywhere in the world.

Russian officials heavily criticized the law, saying that Washington does not provide sufficient evidence for its enactment and uses it to target people arbitrarily.

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Austria’s ruling coalition party is under fire after a leaked video showed the vice chancellor discussing alleged quid pro quo arrangements with a “Russian oligarch niece” … and some pundits quickly had their Russiagate meltdowns.

The scandal rocked the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) on Friday after two German publications, Spiegel and Suddeutsche Zeitung, released exposes of a video leaked to them by an unnamed party. The video shows a July 2017 meeting at an Ibiza villa, where Heinz-Christian Strache, the party leader and vice chancellor of Austria, and Johann Gudenus, Strache’s protégé and senior figure in the FPO, discuss alleged shady deals with a woman identified as Alena Makarova by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The conversations reportedly lasted for hours. One of the options “discussed” there was that the mysterious woman “and her companion” would buy a majority share in Austria’s major tabloid – Kronen Zeitung – and use it to prop up FPO’s bid in the October 2017 national election.

The FPO narrowly came in third place and became a junior partner in the current ruling coalition. In exchange, the politicians said the woman’s construction business could get government contracts once the party is in power. The politicians also discussed alleged circumventing of Austria’s transparency laws for political donations by funneling money through a charity.

The scandal led to opposition calls for the two politicians implicated to resign and even for the coalition to break up, which could lead to a snap election. On Saturday, Strache confirmed the meeting but insisted the information was taken out of context. He still announced his resignation as FPO chief and vice chancellor not to damage the ruling coalition. Gudenus did the same, giving up his mandate as a member of the Austrian Parliament. 

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That said, some pundits already had their usual Russiagate meltdowns, alleging the tape proves that the FPO was bought and paid-for by Moscow, which conspired with the right-wing party to destroy Austria’s freedom of the press. The pièce de résistance in this claim is that the woman Strache and Gudenus talked with is described as a “suspected Russian oligarch niece.”

The German outlets indeed say the woman spoke Russian and English. This leaves a pretty large field of options for who she might be besides a relative of a Kremlin-controlled businessman, through whom the Russian government may have wanted to gain influence in Austria.

Strache himself said on Saturday the woman was a Russian-speaking Latvian national, who told Gudenus that she and her daughter wanted to move to Vienna to secure the meeting. He added they were an obvious plant, considering how the situation played out.

Notably, Der Spiegel article itself says that the video was “clearly done as a trap” for the FPO politicians. The scandal conveniently erupted days before the European Parliament election in Austria and may understandably hurt the FPO’s performance.

Anyway, if the “niece” was a Russian government agent, it doesn’t seem that she managed to get Strache and Gudenus on board with some plan to subvert the election. At least the reports say no agreements were reached at the meeting. The Kronen Zeitung tabloid did partially change ownership after the discussion, but it happened in autumn 2018 and the buyer was Austrian entrepreneur Rene Benko, who told Spiegel the deal was purely commercial.

Lasers are commonly seen as a ‘weapon of the future’ – and that future is already here as they are making it into the military. Laser systems have unique properties, opening new ways of waging warfare, RT’s military analyst says.

Laser weaponry “will largely define” the combat potential of the Russian armed forces “throughout the whole of the 21st century,” President Vladimir Putin said. The country has already adopted a combat laser system – Peresvet – and appears to be seeking other weaponry of this type.

Lasers indeed have great potential to be used in combat, especially against uncongenial targets such as swarms of tiny drones, Russian military analyst Mikhail Khodarenok believes. Apart from that, they have many advantages compared to ballistic and missile weaponry.

“Laser weaponry is quite tempting due to the possibility of a surprise and almost immediate – at the speed of light – attack on an adversary, relative cheapness of a single ‘shot’, high precision and lack of the necessity to stockpile an arsenal of ‘munitions’ during peacetime,” Khodarenok told RT.

Apart from dealing direct damage to an adversary’s personnel and hardware, lasers can be used in a support role, facilitating usage of conventional weapon systems.

The analyst added that optical devices themselves actually amplify and focus a laser beam, making it very effective even at long ranges.

At the same time, laser weaponry has a number of limitations that are still in place despite decades of experiments with such arms around the world. Above all, the main issue is the need for a powerful and reliable energy source, which makes such systems either very bulky or suitable only for naval vessels.

“To make a 150kw laser ‘shot’ – not that powerful, actually, by modern standards – one needs energy of 450kw,” Khodarenok said. “Ideally, a laser system needs a capacitor able to charge as fast as the system itself uses it. It would allow it to use lasers in combat continuously.”

Laser systems are also quite sensitive to transparency of the atmosphere, as bad weather or mere smoke greatly affects their performance (at least at this stage). Laser beams – like any light – tend to dissipate with distance, and for now, “combat range might be limited to several dozen kilometers,” Khodarenok added.

What exactly does Russia have in stock?

Russia adopted a new “battle laser complex,” dubbed Peresvet, last year, yet little is known about what exactly the system is capable of. The complex is mounted on a wheeled vehicle, featuring a cannon-like laser emitter and a large container, presumably holding its power source.

It is not known if the device can “blind” optics or actually melt holes in something, and it’s not even known what exactly – land or air units – it’s supposed to target. In the Soviet era, the country fielded a handful of laser weaponry prototypes, primarily blinding devices, designed to target the enemy’s optics. The last Soviet weapon of this type, the 1K17 Szhatie, was produced shortly before the collapse of the country and never entered into mass production.

What about other countries?

The US has been experimenting with lasers for decades as well, trying to fit them into various combat roles. While repeated attempts to create an aircraft-based system were not very fruitful, the US successfully fielded and tested several prototypes of ground vehicles and naval systems. One of the newest is the MEHEL laser system, mounted on a Stryker APC, which has successfully shot down a number of light drones during testing.

Another major power – China – is not sitting idle either. Beijing puts “experimental systems on ships, coastal platforms, self-propelled chassis. One of the Chinese lasers has reportedly hit an unmanned aerial vehicle some 300 meters away,” Khodarenok said.

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Pyongyang has urged the UN to act after North Korea’s bulk carrier, the Wise Honest, was captured by US forces. It was seized a year after being detained in Indonesia.

Pyongyang’s UN representative Kim Song has sent a letter on Friday to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asking for immediate action to be taken to return the ship.

“You must take urgent measures as a way of contributing to the stability of the Korean peninsula and proving the impartiality of the UN,” the letter said.

North Korea’s UN representative also called the US’s action “unlawful” and “outrageous,” describing the US as a “gangster country that does not care at all about international law,” according to North Korea’s state media KCNA.

The ship was seized by the US a year after it was detained in Indonesia. It was loaded with a $3 million shipment of North Korean coal, and the vessel had its AIS tracking transponder turned off when it entered Indonesian waters. Indonesian authorities arrested the captain and charged him with “knowingly hoisting a false flag,” UN Security Council documents show. Later, a US judge issued a warrant to seize the vessel in July 2018. Officials announced the seizure Thursday as the vessel was close to entering US territorial waters.

Calling on the UN, North Korea had also cited disappointment in the failed summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump in Singapore last year. The summit was heralded as reconciliation between the two countries, which have been in conflict for decades. But the second meeting in Vietnam this February showed both countries stand far away from any constructive deal. This has lead to a new round of confrontations.

It’s unclear whether the UN will respond to North Korea’s latest demand. The UN has sanctioned the country numerous times for violating UN Security Council resolutions with its nuclear and missile programs. One of Kim Jong-un’s demands at the summit with Trump in Singapore was that some of these sanctions would be lifted, but the agreement ultimately came to no avail on this issue.

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US politicians and lobbyists applied pressure on the Irish government before it passed a bill banning goods from illegal Israel settlements, including threatening the immigration status of Irish people in the US.

Documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request by the TheJournal.ie reveal lobby groups and US politicians sought to influence the Irish government to stop the passage of the Occupied Territories Bill, banning the sale of goods from illegal Israeli settlements. The bill passed in both houses of Ireland’s parliament in December and January.

Republican Massachusetts Rep. Steven S. Howitt wrote to Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney and leader of the opposition Fianna Fail party Micheal Martin in January, warning that the bill “threatens to jail citizens of Irish origin and sanction Irish based companies in Massachusetts who engage in commercial activity with the State of Israel.”

The Irish bill makes it an offence for a person to import or sell goods or services or extract resources originating in an occupied territory. US law prevents companies from taking part in boycotts against Israel.

Howitt claimed this would force Irish citizens to “make an impossible choice, whether to return to Ireland to face prosecution or stay [and] violate the terms of their immigration status in the United States.”

Indiana Secretary of Commerce James A. Schellinger also wrote to Coveney and Martin explaining that while he “respects the autonomy of the Irish government,” Indiana has a “strong relationship with the State of Israel.” He said he was concerned that the bill could impact companies operating in Indiana, and affect the state’s economy.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Voice group wrote to Israel’s ambassador to Ireland in January, saying the Irish bill “singles out Israel” and “sets a dangerous precedent which is detrimental to the relations between our countries.”

The letter said that because Irish people do not understand “the intricate minutiae of the territorial conflict,” the legislation would mean people would conclude “it’s open season on Israel.”

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