World

PARIS — The abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe leaves Europe without a female monarch, but not for long — a young generation of princesses born in the 21st century will be ascending to thrones across the continent in the coming years.

Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth, born in 2001; Catharina-Amalia of The Netherlands (2003); Ingrid Alexandra of Norway (2004); Leonor of Spain (2005); and Estelle of Sweden (2012) — half of the hereditary monarchies on the Continent are likely to be led by a queen before too long.

Many will be the first to take the throne after the introduction of female succession laws, a privilege previously reserved for male heirs.

Previous queens, such as Elizabeth II of Britain, who died in 2022, had no brothers to inherit the throne.

“Sweden was the first country in the world to adopt a gender-neutral order of succession, in 1980, when Princess Victoria bumped her younger brother down and she became crown princess” retroactively, Swedish royals expert Roger Lundgren told AFP.

Modern monarchs 

Several experts said gender was unlikely to have much of an impact as the future queens embrace their new roles.

“Much of what kings and queens do today, and what they will do in 25 years, is what kings did 200 years ago too — state visits, receiving ambassadors, ceremonial things,” Lundgren said.

Lundgren also noted that unlike earlier generations of queens, many in the upcoming generation has done some form of military service in their country.

In December, for example, Spain’s Hola! magazine showed Princess Leonor in combat camouflage taking part in ski drills with her unit on slopes in the Pyrenees.

Other princesses have studied in elite schools at home or abroad — both Leonor and Princess Elisabeth of Belgium studied at Atlantic College in Wales — exposing them more to global affairs and concerns such as feminist causes or the risks from climate change.

“A clearer, firmer footing in the everyday life of the people, in combination with the pomp, castles, jewels and the fairy tale, is the winning concept to keep the monarchy,” said Ebba Kleberg von Sydow, a Swedish influencer and royals expert.

She said the future queens were likely to prove more media-savvy as well, if only to show that monarchies remain grounded and relevant in modern society.

Lundgren noted that while Queen Margrethe “doesn’t even own a smartphone, and is proud of it”, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon have their own WhatsApp group.

“You need to be on more platforms, have your message reach people in a completely different way, now that traditional media channels that previous generations of royals used no longer reach everyone,” von Sydow said.

New challenges 

In many ways, Europe’s future queens will be wrestling with new iterations of the question that has often confronted their ancestors.

“Each new generation of monarchs has had to face one main challenge, and not the least: the questioning of what is the use of a monarchy,” said Lisa Castro, a royals historian at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures in southern France.

DAVOS, Switzerland — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Wednesday on Israel to help rather than hinder the Palestinian Authority, saying that Israel's long-term security was at stake.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blinken renewed his call for a "pathway to a Palestinian state" even as Washington backs Israel's Gaza campaign launched in response to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack.

"You're not going to get the genuine security you need absent that. And, of course, to that end as well, a stronger, reformed Palestinian Authority that can more effectively deliver for its own people has to be part of the equation," Blinken said.

An effective Palestinian Authority can only operate "with the support, with the help, of Israel, not with its active opposition", Blinken said.

"Even the most effective Authority is going to have a lot of trouble if it's got the active opposition of any Israeli government," he said.

The United States has backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call to eradicate Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, but has called for the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank, gradually to take over control in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu has long denounced the Palestinian Authority and been sceptical of a Palestinian state.

In one point of contention, the United States has been pressing Israel to release tax revenue that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

Blinken said that the Palestinian Authority was working to address fundamental issues and improving transparency.

While not directly answering a question about Netanyahu’s hard-right government, Blinken noted that critics in the past have accused the Palestinians of not being ready to accept a two-state solution.

“The question now is, is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions? Is it prepared to have that mindset?” he said.

At least 24,448 Palestinians, about 70 per cent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Israeli bombardments and ground assaults, according to the Gaza health ministry’s latest figures.

BERLIN — Severe winter weather prompted the cancellation of hundreds of flights on Wednesday at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, as the country faced heavy snowfall and freezing rain.

A Frankfurt airport spokeswoman said 570 of 1,047 flights had been axed from the schedule by late morning as Germany’s business capital prepared for dramatic weather conditions. 

By early afternoon, all remaining departures were struck from the schedule due to the onset of freezing rain although landings were still possible, a spokesman said. It was not immediately clear how long the disruption would continue. 

Munich airport also reported “significant restrictions in flight service” due to bad weather, with 250 of 650 scheduled flights cancelled. 

Flag carrier Lufthansa advised passengers to confirm that their flights were still scheduled before setting off for airports.

Low pressure system Gertrud bearing down on southwestern and central Germany promised up to 40 centimetres of snow and treacherously icy road conditions, particularly in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

State police there reported an “accumulation of accidents” on roads near Baden-Baden while national rail company Deutsche Bahn said it was slowing down its high-speed trains due to slick conditions.

It warned of delays and cancellations in its regional and long-distance network, particularly between the western cities of Cologne and Frankfurt.

Firefighters and other first responders in Rhineland-Palatinate in the southwest prepared for a rash of road accidents and other emergencies by calling up extra staff and vehicles. They urged motorists not to take to the roads unless absolutely necessary.

In large parts of Bavaria, Germany’s biggest state, schools were shuttered in anticipation of dangerous winter conditions. 

DES MOINES, United States — Iowa Republicans kicked off the nominating contests for November’s US presidential election in an Arctic blast as Donald Trump’s rivals bid to confound polling by giving the runaway favourite a competitive race.

Bundled up residents shuffled into more than 1,600 voting locations which opened at 7:00pm (01:00 GMT), launching a blockbuster evening that presents the sternest test yet of Trump’s promise to ride a year of enormous polling leads to a stunning White House return.

But the Hawkeye State is anticipating its coldest ever caucuses, with wind chills of -40 degrees (Fahrenheit and Celsius) forcing candidates to cancel events at the last minute and aides to fret over turnout.

Barring an unprecedented polling failure, Trump expects to be able to lock in victory with an earlier announcement than usual as he leads former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by almost 30 points.

The margin of the ex-president’s victory is likely to be the only unknown quantity, and the tycoon’s team has been lowering expectations, telling reporters a 12-point win would make for a good night.

“Brave the weather, go out and save America,” Trump beseeched supporters at his only rally on Sunday.

Iowa accounts for less than 2 per cent of the delegates awarded nationwide in the process to pick a party flagbearer, so a big night by no means guarantees success in the rest of the nominating season.

But a strong showing is essential for candidates hoping for a springboard to New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, and plenty of promising campaigns have crashed and burned in the frigid Upper Midwest.

The Trump machine looks much more well-oiled than it did when the former reality TV star lost in 2016, with boots on the ground across the state.

The candidate himself was off the trail in the final week, however, as he made voluntary appearances in some of the many court cases making his tilt at the White House a campaign like no other in history.

“He’s running a campaign about putting himself and his issues first. That’s what he cares about,” DeSantis said in an interview with ABC.

“You can be the most worthless Republican in America but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful.”

Iowa is critical for DeSantis, who has bet all his chips on a strong ground operation, shifting significant resources to the state and spending months wooing voters in all 99 counties.

Analysts say anything short of a second-place finish would be disastrous for the hard-line conservative, yet the influential final Des Moines Register Iowa poll out Saturday showed Haley beating him by four points.

The surging Haley has tried to downplay expectations in Iowa and says she is looking simply for a strong performance ahead of the primary next Tuesday in her preferred state of New Hampshire.

‘Target’ 

She has repeatedly touted her electability over Trump, pointing to the “chaos” of his criminal cases and reminding Iowans that Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

But the other camps have questioned the commitment of her supporters — especially given the weather — after the Iowa poll found that just 9 per cent feel “extremely enthusiastic” about her candidacy.

“I think we’ve always had a target on our back because we’ve been the one moving up, everybody else is going down and that’s a great thing,” Haley told Fox News.

Caucuses — a quirk of the US election calendar — are town hall-style meetings involving speeches and debate that a handful of states stage instead of the regular primary votes.

Armies of volunteers have fanned out through Iowa in recent weeks, knocking on doors or manning phone banks, while candidates dominated the air waves with talk show appearances and a relentless barrage of campaign ads.

The caucuses feature some low-polling candidates too, including biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.

Caucuses also are being held by Iowa’s Democrats, along with voting by mail until March, with President Joe Biden facing two challengers but no serious threat.

TOKYO — A Korean Air airliner “struck” an empty Cathay Pacific plane while taxiing at a snow-hit Japanese airport on Tuesday, with both airlines saying there were no injuries.

The incident at New Chitose Airport serving the northern Japanese city of Sapporo, came two weeks after a near-catastrophic collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport between a Japan Airlines aircraft and a smaller coast guard plane.

“Our aircraft, which was stationary at the time with no customers nor crew onboard, was struck by a Korean Air A330 which was taxiing past,” Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific said in a statement.

Korean Air also confirmed there were no injuries among the 276 passengers and 13 crew on board its Airbus A330-300 that had been set to depart for Seoul’s main airport Incheon from New Chitose on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The airline said its plane “came into contact” with the Cathay aircraft at 5:35pm Japanese time (0835 GMT) “during pushback... when the third-party ground handler vehicle slipped due to heavy snow’.

“There were no injuries and the airline is cooperating with all relevant authorities,” the carrier said.

A spokesman of the airport operator confirmed the “contact” of the two planes to AFP, but did not give further details including the cause of the accident.

Neither airline gave information on the amount of damage done but both said that their passengers needed to be placed on other planes.

Footage from public broadcaster NHK showed a snow-covered Korean Air plane with damage to its wing.

NHK said the wing tip was broken off and that the rear section of Cathay’s aircraft was damaged.

Airport firefighters were on standby following the accident, but no oil leaks or fires had been confirmed, according to Hokkaido Cultural Broadcasting.

Hokkaido has been hit by a cold front in recent days with heavy snow warnings issued in several cities.

A total of 46 flights were reportedly cancelled on Tuesday due to heavy snow.

Tightened protocols 

In the January 2 incident, all 379 people on board the Japan Airlines Airbus escaped just before the aircraft was engulfed in flames. Five of the six people on the smaller aircraft died.

The Japanese government announced last week that it has tightened its air traffic control protocols after the accident.

Under the new requirements in place nationwide, a staff member must constantly watch a monitoring system that alerts control towers when runway incursions take place.

And to prevent misunderstandings, controllers must not tell planes what number in line they are for take-off, the ministry said in statements uploaded to its website.

“One of my biggest missions is to restore confidence in aviation as public transport,” Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito said.

The ministry also said it would set up an expert panel to investigate further ways to improve safety.

A transcript of communications released by the ministry suggested that the JAL plane was cleared to land, but the coast guard plane was instructed to halt before the runway.

Controllers told the coast guard plane that it was “No.1”, meaning next in line for take-off.

But the coast guard pilot — the only survivor — has reportedly said he believed he had clearance to move onto the runway, where his plane stood for around 40 seconds before the crash.

In the decade to 2023, at least 23 “serious incidents” that risked a runway collision were reported by the Japan Transport Safety Board, according to the Asahi newspaper.

In five of the cases, mistakes in air traffic control were suspected as a cause, the newspaper said.

BERLIN — French Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux has joined a cultural boycott of Germany over the Hamas-Israel war, her publisher said on Tuesday, as the Gaza conflict divides the country's cultural scene.

The petition has collected over a thousand signatures, according to organisers "Strike Germany", although the names could not be independently verified.

The group calls on signatories to end their participation in "festivals, panels, and exhibitions" in Germany.

The petition comes in response to what the "Strike Germany" sees as signs that "freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine" are being suppressed in Germany.

A wave of cultural events and prize ceremonies in Germany have been cancelled after participants expressed views considered to be too anti-Israel.

The trend has raised concerns that artistic freedoms are being constrained, even as organisers defend their decisions as necessary to push back against the possibility of anti-Semitism.

Ernaux has "signed the 'Strike Germany' petition", a spokeswoman for the writer's German publisher Suhrkamp told AFP, after the news was first reported by the German Rheinische Post daily.

The "publication and staging of her texts" are not affected by the boycott, Ernaux told Suhrkamp, according to the spokeswoman.

Earlier this week, prize-winning Bosnian and Serbian author Lana Bastasic said she had ended her contract with German publishing house S Fischer over the war.

On Instagram, she accused her publisher of failing “to be vocal” about the plight of Gazans and for having “kept quiet on the systemic and systematic censorship happening in Germany”.

Germany has been steadfast in its support of Israel since the war started.

At least 24,285 Palestinians, about 70 per cent of them women, children and adolescents, have been killed in Gaza in Israeli bombardments and ground operations since October 7, according to the Hamas government.