World

LISBON — Portugal’s Infrastructure Minister Joao Galamba has been indicted as part of a probe into energy contracts that threatens to embroil Prime Minister Antonio Costa. 

The investigation covers alleged “misuse of funds, active and passive corruption by political figures, and influence peddling”, according to a statement on Tuesday from public prosecutors. 

Costa’s “name and authority” have been cited by suspects questioned during the probe, the statement said. There is a separate probe covering Costa, the statement said. 

The statement was issued after a series of searches conducted at several government ministries and the prime minister’s office that local media reported earlier Tuesday. 

The investigation covers lithium mining concessions in the north of the country, as well as a hydrogen production project and data centre to be built by the company Start Campus in Sines, a town about 100 kilometres south of Lisbon. 

Citing flight risk and the possibility that illegal activity could continue, arrest warrants were issued for Costa’s chief of staff, the mayor of Sines, and two executives at Start Campus. 

The president of the executive board of the Portuguese Agency for the Protection of the Environment (APA) was also indicted. 

APA in May approved a mining project for lithium, an essential metal for the manufacturing of electric batteries. 

A second project was given the green light at the start of September. 

Portugal has the largest lithium reserves in Europe and is the continent’s leading producer, but its current output goes entirely to the ceramic and glass-making industries. 

Earlier, Costa’s office confirmed to Portuguese news agency Lusa that it had been searched, but declined to comment on the legal process. 

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke briefly with Costa, the head of state’s office told Lusa.

ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN — Water-scarce Turkmenistan said Monday it had planted almost half-a-million trees in a nationwide “green campaign” that is being used to advance the ruling family’s personality cult.

Since coming to power last year, Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov has advanced an intense campaign to promote himself and honour his father — ex-president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov — with portraits, billboards, statues and monuments of the leaders having been erected across the country.

Neutral Turkmenistan, the government’s official newspaper, reported Monday details of a nationwide “green campaign”, in which Turkmen citizens planted more than 472,000 trees — including conifers, hardwoods and fruit trees — in a single day.

It published a photo of Serdar Berdymukhamedov shovelling earth in a green-and-white sports outfit.

“On this autumn day, the whole country went on a greening campaign to increase the ‘green wealth’ of the country,” the paper said.

Turkmenistan is one of the most closed societies in the world, where dissent is outlawed and the Berdymukhamedovs have exercised tight control over all spheres of public life for almost two decades.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says water stress in Turkmenistan is “extremely high”.

Three-quarters of the country are covered by the black sands of the Karakum Desert and annual precipitation is below 100mm in places.

A vast 1,400 kilometre canal — one of the world’s largest irrigation projects — carries water across the desert to the capital Ashgabat and supplies the country’s important cotton fields.

Officials say Turkmenistan has planted around 145 million trees in the past few years — but information coming out of the reclusive state is impossible to verify.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkmenistan 176th out of 180 for freedom of the press, while rights group Freedom House has called the country a “repressive authoritarian state, where political rights and civil liberties are almost completely denied”. 

PARIS — The French senate starts on Monday to debate a hugely controversial immigration bill that the government says will bolster security for legal migrants but that opponents see as new evidence of a lurch to the right by President Emmanuel Macron.

Left-wingers reject the draft law’s bid to expel more people and toughen conditions for irregular migrants, while conservatives’ hackles have been raised by provisions to regularise the situation of undocumented workers in sectors with labour shortages.

It is the right flank that poses the biggest obstacle to Macron and his minority centrist government passing the legislation.

Conservative MPs’ votes will be needed to get the bill through the lower house of parliament, the national assembly, while the right has a majority in the upper house, the senate.

“This text is about firmness,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Sunday, drawing on language meant to appeal to the conservative Republicans party.

He vowed to “find a way to get [the bill] through parliament”.

But several attempts to get the Republicans on board over the past year have fallen flat and there is little sign that this time will be different.

“We can’t have a bill that wants both to expel more people and regularise more people,” Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the senate conservatives, told AFP.

He said any easing up of immigration law would be a “sign of weakness”.

Macron on Sunday proposed broadening constitutional rules governing the type of social issues like immigration that can be put to referendum.

The bone thrown towards the right has so far had little visible effect on rhetoric around the immigration bill.

‘Remove and integrate’ 

As elsewhere in Europe, right-wingers claim that France’s asylum system mainly attracts people looking for better economic conditions.

The number of people seeking asylum reached over 137,000 last year, up 31.3 per cent year-on-year and just shy of a 2019 record.

Expulsions have also been stepped up, to almost 15,400 last year — 15 per cent higher than in 2021.

But Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Monday rebuffed claims that regularising undocumented workers would create a “pull effect” and increase migration.

Regularisations would benefit “people who’ve been on our territory for years, who are well integrated, who’ve been working for years”, she told broadcaster France Inter.

The bill aims “to more quickly remove those who shouldn’t be here and at the same time to better integrate those who should remain”, Borne said.

She nevertheless revealed continuing divisions within government when she opposed removing state medical aid for undocumented people, calling it “a question of public health”.

Interior Minister Darmanin has said he plans to “eliminate” the aid, replacing it only with cover for emergencies — calling it a step towards “a good compromise” with the Republicans.

Such talk, along with plans for annual migration quotas set by parliament and restrictions on allowing people to rejoin their families already in France, has drawn opposition from aid groups and left-leaning politicians.

A protest was planned on Monday outside the Senate building in Paris’ touristic left bank district.

‘Botched job’ 

Debate around immigration was stoked in France over the summer by mass arrivals in Italy and a visit by Pope Francis to the southern French port city Marseille, where he urged people to welcome migrants.

Last month’s killing of a teacher by a Russian migrant with apparent extremist beliefs has further ramped up the pressure.

The government believes public opinion is on its side, with 87 per cent in favour of changing immigration rules according to an Opinionway survey for daily Le Parisien.

Large majorities were also in favour of the individual measures in the bill, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, the far-right National Rally (RN), formerly the National Front, of Marine Le Pen sees opportunity in its pet theme dominating political debate ahead of next year’s European Parliament elections and in the long climb to the 2027 presidential election, when Macron cannot stand again due to term limits.

The immigration law was “a botched job”, RN Vice President Sebastien Chenu told broadcaster RTL on Sunday — while saying the party’s 80 MPs could vote for it in the hope of “small results”.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of protesters in the US capital on Saturday called for a ceasefire in Gaza amid Israel's relentless bombing campaign, with some slamming President Joe Biden's support for Washington's top ally in the Middle East.

The rally, at which demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and wore the traditional keffiyeh scarf, was the largest protest in Washington since October 7.

"Free, free Palestine," and "End the siege on Gaza now", the protesters shouted.

Other slogans targeted the US president: "Biden, Biden you can't hide, you signed off on genocide" and "We say no, Genocide Joe."

"It is unacceptable to allow for the loss of so many innocent lives and we cannot consider this a proportional conflict," said 24-year-old Amanda Eisenhour of Virginia.

"This is a massacre, a genocide... a stain on our history, and I cannot accept as a citizen that my taxes are funding this."

Jasmine Iman, 25, came from New York to attend the protest and said she will not vote for Biden in next year's presidential election because of his steadfast support for Israel.

"We will not vote for the Democratic Party. We will make sure that everyone we know knows not to vote for the Democratic Party because of [Gaza]," she said.

Biden, 80, is likely to face off against 77-year-old Republican former president Donald Trump a year from now, with polls showing a hypothetical matchup in a virtual dead heat.

If the election ends up being a choice between Biden and Trump, "I'll sit it out," Iman said.

Fighting raged in Gaza on Saturday for a 29th day since Hamas militants stormed across the Israeli border.

Since then, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip and sent in ground troops. The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory says 9,488 people have been killed, around two-thirds of them women and children.

HAMBURG — An armed father who took his four-year-old daughter hostage, forcing the suspension of flights at Hamburg airport, gave himself up “without resistance” on Sunday after hours of negotiations, German police said.

The 35-year-old man had barricaded himself and the child in his car at the foot of a Turkish Airlines plane on Saturday evening, demanding to be allowed on board after a custody dispute with the mother. 

He had rammed his car through the security area onto the apron where planes are parked, firing two shots in the air and throwing two burning bottles out of the vehicle, police said.

“The hostage-taking has ended,” local police posted on X, formerly Twitter, Sunday afternoon.

“The man has left his car with his daughter and been taken for questioning by security forces without resistance,” it said, adding the child “seems in good health”.

Police had brought psychologists and teams of negotiators as well as rapid response units to the airport in northern Germany.

Authorities said a dispute over custody of the child was believed to be behind the incident, with the wife of the driver placing an emergency call alerting police to the abduction of her child.

Police had described lengthy negotiations which had taken place in Turkish and announced the father was believed to be “in possession of a loaded weapon and perhaps explosives”.

The man, a Turk according to the daily Bild newspaper, had at first demanded to be allowed to fly to Turkey with his daughter.

“That’s no longer the aim of negotiations,” a local police spokesperson had said.

“We believe that the child is physically well,” police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen told regional television channel NDR.

“That’s what we can see and what we gather from telephone conversations with the man responsible for what has happened. We can hear the child in the background.”

“I don’t want to talk about her mental state,” the spokeswoman added.

“We are talking, talking and talking again,” with the father, and “trying to find a peaceful solution”, she had added.

On Sunday morning the airport management posted on X saying, “Air traffic remains suspended until further notice.”

On Saturday evening, 17 flights schedulled to land in Hamburg were diverted. Another 286 flights were schedulled for Sunday, carrying some 34,500 passengers.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said on Sunday it had opened a criminal investigation after a Russian missile strike killed multiple soldiers during what media reports said was an “award ceremony” near the frontline this week.

At least 20 soldiers were reported to have been killed in the attack, which local media said took place on Friday as a brigade gathered to receive awards in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region.

“This is a tragedy that could have been avoided,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an evening address on Sunday.

“A criminal investigation has been registered into the tragedy,” he added.

AFP was not able to immediately verify the circumstances of the strike or the number of people killed.

The Ukrainian army confirmed on Saturday that a number of soldiers from its 128th Mountain Assault Brigade had been killed in a missile strike the day before, but did not provide casualty figures.

“[Russia] fired an Iskander-M missile at the personnel of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, killing the soldiers and causing injuries of varying severity to local residents,” the army said.

One Ukrainian soldier said on social media that 22 people from the brigade had been killed, criticising commanders for having held the ceremony.

“Everyone is writing that ‘Heroes died’. Although it is more appropriate to write ‘Heroes became victims’,” soldier Ivan Savytskyy said.

“They became victims of military rudimentary traditionalism in its worst form,” he said.

Russia said in a defence ministry briefing on Saturday that it had inflicted a “fire defeat” on a Ukrainian assault unit in Zaporizhzhia and that up to 30 people had been killed.

Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia region, where the assault brigade is based, will observe a three-day mourning period starting Monday, local governor Victor Mykyta said.

“Our heroes are alive as long as the memory of them and their deeds lives on,” he said Sunday.

BLETCHLEY PARK, UNITED KINGDOM — UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday hosted political and tech leaders at the inaugural global AI safety summit, predicting the technology will radically alter society for generations to come.

The release of ChatGPT and other generative AI systems, which are capable of quickly producing text, images and audio from simple commands in everyday language, has captivated the public and offered a glimpse into the technology’s potential.

But they have also prompted concerns around issues ranging from job losses to cyberattacks and the control that humans actually have over the systems.

The two-day summit at Bletchley Park, north of London, kicked off on Wednesday with the publication of an agreement signed by 28 countries and the European Union acknowledging the “need for international action”.

But Thursday is when the leading nations formally got together to address the most pressing risks presented by the rapidly evolving technology. 

US Vice President Kamala Harris, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined representatives from governments including France, Germany and Australia to discuss global priorities for AI in the next five years.

While China was invited and attended on the first day, it was not invited to more sensitive discussions on the largely behind-closed-doors sessions on the second day. 

Sunak was expected to “make the case for global responsibility to address the risks in order to seize the opportunities of AI”, according to his Downing Street office.

He is trying to get other countries to follow the UK’s plans for state-backed testing and evaluation of AI models before they are released.

Harris told delegates of US efforts to help distinguish authentic government-produced digital content from AI-generated content, and to prevent the use of discriminatory AI algorithms, according to her office.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told AFP there was no time to lose in coordinating a global response to AI.

“We have to move at a pace that matches the pace of technology change, we don’t have a choice,” he said.

“And actually what we’re seeing is a willing[ness] globally, at both government level and within the commercial world, to move very, very quickly.”

Thursday’s second session includes representatives from academia and civil society along with companies at the forefront of AI, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Microsoft.

“I believe there will be nothing more transformative to the futures of our children and grandchildren than technological advances like AI,” said Sunak.

“The UK has led the way in this global conversation on AI safety, but no one country can tackle the risks alone,” he added.

Musk warning 

Further AI Safety Summits are scheduled to take place in South Korea and France over the coming year, while the United States and Britain both this week announced the establishment of institutes to examine and evaluate the risks of cutting-edge AI models. 

UK Technology Minister Michelle Donelan told AFP on Wednesday that the summit “isn’t designed to produce a blueprint for global legislation”.

But she said it was instead “designed to forge a path ahead... so that we can get a better handle and understanding on the risk of frontier AI” — the first wave of mainstream AI applications.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk attended both days, and described the event as “timely”.

“It’s one of the existential risks that we face and it is potentially the most pressing one if you look at the timescale and rate of advancement — the summit is timely, and I applaud the prime minister for holding it,” he said.

Sunak and Musk were due to hold a joint Q&A session in London after the event closes on Thursday.

Ahead of the meeting, the G7 powers agreed on Monday on a non-binding “code of conduct” for companies developing the most advanced AI systems.

In Rome, ministers from Italy, Germany and France called for an “innovation-friendly approach” to regulating AI in Europe, as they urged more investment to challenge the United States and China.