In a national referendum, Switzerland overwhelmingly voted to approve tighter gun control measures and bring them more in line with stricter EU rules following a number of terrorist incidents across Europe.

Residents of Italian-speaking Ticino canton were the only ones to reject the stricter rules on handling firearms after 63.7 percent of the country voted to amend the nation’s relatively liberal gun policies, which in the past somewhat mirrored gun laws in the US.

Switzerland, whose population owns roughly 42 guns per 100 residents, allows adults to purchase semi-automatic rifles and hollow-point ammunition for hunting through easily obtainable weapon acquisition permits, but requires special permits to buy automatic weapons, suppressors, and laser sights.

Following Sunday’s referendum, which witnessed 43.9 percent turnout, ownership of semi-automatic weapons will now require mandatory regular firearm training and serial numbering of gun parts to track them. Weapons will also have to be registered.

Over 875,000 weapons were registered in Switzerland by August 2017 to 279,000 owners, while it is believed that civilians are in possession of between 2.3 million and 3.4 million firearms. Despite the massive presence of firearms in a country of just under 9 million people, the gun homicide rate in Switzerland is very low, with 0.5 cases per 100,000 people.

Despite the exemplary gun heritage, Switzerland, which is not part of the EU but part of the Schengen visa-free travel zone security agreement, was urged by the EU to tighten its laws in line with rules adopted by the bloc following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

Prior to the referendum, the Swiss government warned voters that a rejection of this new legislation could result in the exclusion of the country from the Schengen zone. Opponents slammed the government’s drive for stricter gun control, arguing that “EU-dictated” measures amount to “disarming” Switzerland through “useless, dangerous, un-Swiss” requirements.

“With no effect on the fight against terrorism, it will only hit honest, law-abiding citizens who possess legal weapons (so, us!),” Jean-Luc Addor, a Swiss People’s Party lawmaker, wrote on his website. “It’s the epitome of injustice.”

“Too bad that the population has followed the argument of fear with Schengen. It’s a bit unfortunate, but we accept the result,” Olivia de Weck, vice president of lobby group ProTell, said.

“Today, I am sad because our freedoms have declined,” Jean-Luc Addor, MP from the Swiss People’s Party, said, noting that the new rules will “push back the freedoms and advance the police state.”

The strong firearms culture in Switzerland is closely linked to the country’s national defense service. Most men between the ages of 18 and 30 are subject to compulsory military service for three weeks a year and are allowed to keep the weapon assigned to them once they go home. Gun ownership is so ingrained in the Swiss DNA that any national aged 10 or older can shoot rifles at any federal range free of charge.

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India’s ruling National Democratic Alliance headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is on course to win the general election by a substantial margin, multiple exit polls indicate.

The world’s largest democracy, with nearly 900 million eligible voters, finished its complicated, weeks-long, multi-stage election process on Sunday to decide who sits in India’s 543-member lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha.

While the final results will not be officially announced until May 23, multiple exit polls show that Modi will most likely secure his second five-year term as prime minister after a strong performance by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in an epic clash with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Rahul Gandhi from the Indian National Congress (INC) party.

The India Today/Axis My India poll predicts the NDA will win between 339 and 369 seats, while the UPA will be able to secure between 77 to 108 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha election. Times Now telecast shows the NDA can secure as many as 306 seats, while the leftist coalition is on course to win 132 seats. Another prediction by CVoter-Republic shows 287 and 128 seats for the NDA and UPA respectively. CNN News18/Ipsos survey says that BJP-led alliance can expect to gain 336 seats.

The Nielsen/ABP news channel poll was the only one to show that the ruling coalition would fall short of a 272-seat majority, with 267 seats.

Modi wooed the public by presenting himself as an anti-corruption candidate with a pro-business outlook, who will safeguard the Hindu way of life and remain firm on protecting India’s sovereignty, as recent violence with neighboring Pakistan showed.

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Gandhi, a secular, socialist party candidate, pledged to protect India’s minorities and improve life for the poor. The 48-year-old also rallied support from the public as an experienced politician from the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has occupied a prominent place in the politics of India since the country’s inception in 1947 when his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, became Lok Sabha’s first prime minister.

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Afghan legislators brawled over the appointment of a new speaker as the assembly sat for the first time since elections were held in October. One man even brandished a large knife as security chased him through the chamber.

Video footage from the assembly shows chaos as lawmakers fought about the decision. Members surround the speaker’s seat to block it, when suddenly one parliamentarian is seen running around with a large knife as other MPs and guards try to stop him.

Businessman Mir Rahman Rahmani ran for the speakership but didn’t win a majority. He was declared a winner by his supporters, though, angering opponents who said he hadn’t secured the required 124 votes.

Herat MP Nahid Farid said: “He has secured a majority of the votes and one vote is not an issue, so he is our new chairman.”

The results of the election were only finalized in May following technical problems and accusations of fraud.

“We will never accept the new speaker and there must be a re-election with new candidates,”insisted Mariam Sama, a lawmaker from Kabul.

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Austrian prosecutors have examined the scandalous videotape which cost vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache his job and said they couldn’t find any grounds to launch an investigation over its content.

“There’s no specific proof of a crime being committed coming from this [the video],” Oesterreich 1 radio revealed, citing the statement from the prosecutors.

The Justice Ministry’s General Secretary Christian Pilnacek earlier warned that there were only extracts of the footage available, which would make it impossible to assess the full context of what was going on.

A major political crisis unfolded in Austria on Friday after German papers, Spiegel and Suddeutsche Zeitung, published a video of Strache and another high-ranking member of his rightwing populist Freedom Party (FPO), Johann Gudenus, talking to a woman who claimed to be a “niece of a Russian oligarch.”

They discussed how the woman could support their campaign during the 2017 general election in Austria in exchange for future preferences in getting government contracts in the field of construction. One of the things on the agenda was her buying a majority share in a tabloid newspaper to use it as a platform to promote the FPO.

Strache called the leak of the footage a “political assassination,” announcing resignations from both the position of vice-chancellor and party’s leader. He didn’t dispute the authenticity of the tape. On the contrary, the 49-year-old insisted that it should be made public in its entirety so that everyone could see that he maintained during the meeting that at all the assistance could only be provided “within the law.”

After the news broke, thousands took to the streets of Vienna, demanding a snap election, with Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen later suggesting that the vote should take place in early September.

Suddeutsche Zeitung identified the woman speaking to the Strache and Gudenus in the video as the niece of gas tycoon Igor Makarov. But the businessman denied those claims, saying that he had no family links to that woman and was “an only child” in his family.

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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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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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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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