Global Headlines Express | Italy's political turmoil drags on; The Washington Post asks what awaits deported Afghans at home
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
Agenda Setters
Three years in Brussels had steeped Hewad Sobhani, a 25-year-old Afghan, in Western life: a bright apartment, a busy social calendar, a job at a café. He paid taxes, learned French, made friends. The troubles of home felt a long way off.
Then, in May, he set out on the journey back — one of the thousands of asylum seekers Western Europe turned away this month.
In 2001, 30 years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan came to an end, and other countries took in millions of Afghan refugees. Most crossed the border into Iran or Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands went to Western Europe to build a new life.
War, unrest and religious repression were not, in fact, what drove many of the young ones out. They left while Afghanistan sat under the "democratic trusteeship" of the United States and NATO. Most, like Sobhani, were single. Only a few came from the countryside that has long lived in the Taliban's shadow; the majority came from cities.
In 2014, Afghanistan's wartime economy collapsed as Western troops pulled out, and word went around that many Syrian refugees who reached Europe had managed to stay. Only then did young Afghans like Sobhani join the largest movement of people since the Second World War.
In 2015, 200,000 Afghans entered Western Europe. Eighty percent applied for asylum, and wealthy countries such as Germany granted them temporary permission to remain. Friendly locals, free housing and language classes made legal status feel close at hand.
But for the past two years, Western European countries have been tightening their refugee policies. More applications are refused; deportation orders come faster. None of that means Afghanistan is ready to take back this new wave of its own citizens. They will be harder to absorb than most: they grew up after the Taliban, spent their childhood and adolescence inside the West's promises of democracy and a free life, fled under the threat of war, and are now returned to a country that has to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Unemployment in Afghanistan runs at 40%, and refugees keep arriving back from Iran and Pakistan. Every year 400,000 new job seekers enter the labor market. Families often treat the sudden returnees as a burden, and some of the refugees owe relatives the thousands of dollars they borrowed to pay for the journey west.
Nor is Afghanistan safe. Forty percent of the country lives with constant unrest or violent attack.
"We have security problems. We have economic problems. We also have 1.6 million people sent back from Pakistan and Iran. We signed an agreement with Europe last year to take back every deported civilian, and we cooperate in every way we can — but we will keep asking Europe to look again at its Afghanistan policy," Hafiz Ahmad Miakhel, a spokesman for Afghanistan's refugee ministry, told The Washington Post.
24-Hour News Makers
Two years after Britain's Brexit referendum, Italy's unsettled politics have cast another shadow over the future of the eurozone.
On May 27, after two months of talks, the two parties trying to form a government — the "anti-establishment" populist Five Star Movement and the far-right League — reached a deal. They put to President Sergio Mattarella the name of Giuseppe Conte, a law professor with no political experience, as prime minister, and that of Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old euroskeptic economist, as finance minister.
Mattarella accepted Conte. But to "defend the eurozone" and "avoid panic among investors abroad and inside Italy," he refused Savona at the finance ministry. That evening Conte gave up the post.
On May 28, Mattarella turned instead to Carlo Cottarelli, formerly head of fiscal affairs at the International Monetary Fund, and asked him to lead a caretaker government.
Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement, and Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, were furious. They called for peaceful demonstrations on June 2 and asked people to hang the Italian flag out of their windows against the president. They also said they would not support a technocratic cabinet under Cottarelli. Di Maio and others went so far as to propose impeaching Mattarella — unheard of in Italian history — then withdrew the proposal.
French President Emmanuel Macron praised Mattarella, saying he had "shown a very high sense of responsibility in protecting Italy's institutions and its democratic stability." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was ready to work with whatever government Italy formed, provided its economic policy followed eurozone rules.
According to Bloomberg, Cottarelli has accepted the appointment and will call an election. If his government loses a confidence vote, the election comes this August; if it wins the vote in both the lower house and the senate, the election comes in early 2019.
Italy's last general election was in March.
According to Wall Street CN, Moody's warned in a statement on the 28th that the governing coalition's new "accord" contains no fiscal restraint and could delay or reverse important reforms already made, such as the pension overhaul. Italy could therefore be cut from its current Baa2 rating — the second-lowest investment grade at Moody's — to Baa3, still investment grade, or even to junk.
What Else Happened in the World
The US and China clash over whether China forces technology transfer. The American and Chinese ambassadors to the World Trade Organization argued over "technology transfer" at the WTO on the 28th. Dennis Shea, the US ambassador, said China's administrative rules force foreign firms that want to do business there to share technology, and that Chinese officials can use vague investment regulations to demand transfers. Zhang Xiangchen, China's ambassador, denied that China practices "forced technology transfer," calling the American case a "presumption of guilt" with "no evidence."
The US and Japanese leaders talk by phone, and plan to meet before the Trump–Kim summit. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke with US President Donald Trump by telephone on the evening of the 28th, and the two agreed to hold a Japan–US summit before the American–North Korean meeting. A White House statement said: "The President and the Prime Minister agreed that the complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile programs is imperative."
Paraguay's president, Horacio Cartes, resigns. Horacio Cartes announced on the 28th that he was leaving the presidency to take a senate seat for the 2018–2023 term. Mario Abdo Benítez, the candidate of his ruling Colorado Party, won this year's election and takes office on August 15 for five years.
Palestinian President Abbas leaves hospital. Agence France-Presse reports that Mahmoud Abbas was discharged on the 28th, local time, after eight days of treatment, and promised to return to work.
Israel's prime minister will visit Germany, France and Britain. Benjamin Netanyahu said on the 28th that he travels to Europe next week. Besides meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, he may also see British Prime Minister Theresa May, to compare notes on how to check Iran's nuclear ambitions and its plans to expand across the region.
Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who owns Chelsea, becomes an Israeli citizen — and Israel's richest man. In the FA Cup final on the 19th of this month, Chelsea beat Manchester United for their eighth title, but Abramovich could not attend: his British visa had expired weeks earlier and the renewal was held up. Relations between Moscow and London have grown steadily worse since the poisoning in March, and Israeli citizenship lets Abramovich enter Britain for short stays.
Former US President George H. W. Bush is hospitalized again. McGrath, a spokesman for the Bush family, said on the 27th that George Herbert Walker Bush had been admitted to hospital that day in Maine, in the northeastern United States, because of illness. Bush, the 41st president, served from 1989 to 1993 and is now 93. Barbara, his wife of 73 years, died last month.
The Hong Kong Palace Museum broke ground yesterday, with completion planned for 2022. The Cooperation Agreement on the Construction of the Hong Kong Palace Museum was signed on June 29 last year, confirming the project. The museum will occupy about 10,000 square meters of land with more than 30,000 square meters of floor space, on the western waterfront of the West Kowloon Cultural District, beside the Art Park. The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority will run it.
Someone Said
"The Spider-Man of the 18th arrondissement!"
Mamoudou Gassama, a migrant from Mali, is about to be granted French citizenship, for an unusual reason.
Gassama, 22, left Mali by boat last year, crossed the Mediterranean to Italy and then went on to France. Last Saturday, May 26, walking in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, he saw a crowd in front of an apartment building and a four-year-old boy dangling from a balcony. He climbed the outside of the building to the fourth floor and pulled the child to safety.
Video shot by onlookers went online and set off a wide debate. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, called Gassama "the Spider-Man of the 18th arrondissement." On Monday, May 28, President Emmanuel Macron received him at the Élysée Palace, thanked him, gave him a medal for bravery, and promised him French citizenship and a job with the fire service.
"This has nothing to do with truck drivers anymore. What people are protesting against is corruption."
Brazilian truck drivers have been on strike for a week over soaring fuel prices, paralyzing the country at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion.
In 2016, the state-owned oil company Petrobras decided to track international prices at home, and fuel rose 50% within a year.
On the 24th, the government, Petrobras and the drivers' unions met and agreed to cut diesel prices by 10%, to replace daily price adjustments with a rate fixed for 30 days, and to split the cost between the government and the state oil company. The drivers were told to end the strike at once.
They did not. Food and fuel ran short around the country, factories stopped, transport seized up, and schools closed.
On the 27th, President Michel Temer gave way. In a televised address he cut the price of diesel to 0.46 reais a liter, about $0.13, and said the cut would hold for 60 days.
That was how one supporter of the strike answered in an interview with The New York Times.
You Might Also Be Interested In
The EU plans to blacklist 10 single-use plastic products.
According to China News Service, the EU published a draft proposal on May 28 to ban 10 single-use plastic products: plastic tableware, including straws, knives and forks; cotton swabs; balloons and balloon sticks; plastic food containers; plastic cups; plastic bottles; cigarette butts; plastic bags; crisp packets and sweet wrappers; and wet wipes.
The draft says those 10 items now make up 43% of Europe's marine litter, and fishing gear containing plastic another 27% — 70% together, and the plastic waste most often found on European beaches.
The plan sorts the waste into categories and treats them differently. It is strictest with plastic tableware, cotton swabs and balloon sticks, which it proposes to ban outright.
For plastic food containers and cups, it calls for a sharp cut in consumption; for plastic bottles, it asks every member state to recycle 90% by 2025. For balloons, cigarette butts, plastic bags, crisp packets, wet wipes and fishing gear, it puts pressure on manufacturers to pay for cleanup, recycling, waste disposal and public-awareness campaigns, and requires the packaging of balloons and wet wipes to state the damage they do to the environment and how to dispose of them properly.
Half the plastic collected and sorted inside the EU is currently shipped abroad, and 85% of that goes to China.
Japan's pet insurance market is growing by nearly 20% a year.
Only about 7% of pets in Japan are insured, well behind Britain and Norway. But according to Lianhe Zaobao, the Japanese pet insurance market reached 49 billion yen by the end of last March, a rise of nearly 20%.
In 2017 the country kept 8.92 million dogs and 9.52 million cats. Pets have no public insurance, so owners pay the vet bill in full — a standing worry. Beyond transfusions and blood tests, MRI scans are spreading as a diagnostic tool, and bills have risen with them.
Competition among insurers is getting sharper. Anicom Insurance sells a policy covering 70% of medical costs and works with more than 6,000 hospitals where the claim can be settled at the counter. ipet Insurance has a similar flagship product. Rakuten has entered the market by buying a small-amount, short-term insurance company.
On This Day
May 29, 1917: John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was born.
May 29, 1953: New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
May 29, 1980: The China Family Planning Association was founded.
May 29, 1981: Soong Ching-ling died.
May 29, 1982: The Pope visited Britain for the first time in 450 years.
Cover image from Visual China
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.