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page 23 EU Don’t come to Europe, EU’s Tusk warns illegal economic migrants The European Council president has warned refugees against coming to Europe for economic benefit as thousands of people remained trapped at the Greece-Macedonia border after being blocked from continuing their journey. “I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants, wherever […]

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EU

Don’t come to Europe, EU’s Tusk warns illegal economic migrants

The European Council president has warned refugees against coming to Europe for economic benefit as thousands of people remained trapped at the Greece-Macedonia border after being blocked from continuing their journey.

“I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants, wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe,” Donald Tusk said in Athens on Thursday after meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

“Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing. Greece, or any other European country, will no longer be a transit country.”

Greece is the first transit point for refugees seeking to make the journey north to more prosperous EU states.

The vast majority of the people arriving into Greece are those fleeing war and political repression in countries like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

But EU politicians have sought to crack down on those they say are motivated by financial betterment.

Tusk was on a trip through Balkan states to try to drum up support for cohesion on how to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees – a crisis that threatens to tear the bloc apart – ahead of an emergency EU-Turkey summit on the ongoing crisis on Monday.

S/AFRICA

Oscar Pistorius denied leave to appeal for Steenkamp murder

South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has been denied leave to appeal against his conviction for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

The Constitutional Court has made the ruling, meaning Pistorius will now be sentenced in April.

Pistorius killed Ms Steenkamp in February 2013 after firing four times through a locked toilet door. A manslaughter verdict was overturned in December and a murder verdict introduced in its place.

South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said the Constitutional Court found “no prospect of success” in Pistorius’ appeal.

The case will now go back to Judge Thokozile Masipa – who cleared the athlete of murder in the original case – for sentencing on 18 April. Prosecutors are believed to be targeting a sentence of at least 15 years in jail for Pistorius.

SOMALIA

Al-Shabab journalist Hanafi sentenced to death

A military court in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has sentenced to death a former journalist who helped al-Shabab kill five fellow reporters in Mogadishu.

According to the court verdict, Hassan Hanafi assisted the Islamist militant group by identifying possible targets among journalists between 2007 and 2011.

Mohamed Shute, the chairman of Somali military tribunal, said the evidence against Hanafi proved his involvement in the killings.

“We first confirmed that he was member of al-Shabab militants and then he was found guilty of assisting al-Shabab to target and kill journalists,” Shute said.

In an interview last month with Somali government radio, Hanafi admitted to playing a role in some of the killings, saying that besides naming targets, he told al-Shabab where the journalists could be found.

S/SUDAN

U.N. official says at least 50,000 dead in South Sudan war

At least 50,000 people have been killed in South Sudan’s two-year civil war, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday, a five-fold increase in the death toll given by humanitarian agencies in the early months of the conflict.

A political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, sparked the war in December 2013, which has reopened ethnic fault lines between Kiir’s Dinka and Machar’s Nuer people.

“Fifty thousand killed, maybe more, 2.2 million refugees and displaced, famine coming and looming in just a few months,” the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a small group of reporters. He added that he saw little prospect of implementing an August peace deal.

The United Nations said last month that South Sudan’s warring parties are killing, abducting and displacing civilians and destroying property despite conciliatory rhetoric by Kiir and Machar.

After months of ineffective negotiations and failed ceasefires, both sides agreed in January to share positions in a transitional government, and last month Kiir reappointed Machar to his former post as vice president.

UNITED STATES

US 2016: Mitt Romney warns Trump not fit to run country

US presidential candidate Donald Trump has neither “the temperament nor the judgement to be president”, fellow Republican Mitt Romney says.

He accused Mr Trump of bullying, misogyny and dishonesty in a speech in Utah on Thursday.

“Prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished” if Mr Trump becomes the nominee, he added.

Mr Trump has meanwhile mocked Mr Romney on Twitter as a “failed candidate” who should not advise on electability.

In the latest attack from top figures in the party, several members of the Republican national security community wrote an open letter describing Mr Trump’s “vision of American influence and power in the world” as “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle”.

“He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence,” the letter said.

IRAN

Iran: GCC’s terrorist label for Hezbollah is a mistake

Iran’s deputy foreign minister has said that a decision by a Saudi-led bloc of Gulf Arab states to label the Lebanese group Hezbollah a terrorist organisation was a “mistake”.

Iranian state TV on Thursday quoted Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying that the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) move would undermine peace in the region and the unity of Lebanon.

He said it was a “new mistake” by the GCC and that Iran was “proud” of Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani said that the six Gulf monarchies took the decision because “the [Hezbollah] militia recruited young people [from the Gulf] for terrorist acts”.

Hezbollah, a Shia political organisation with an armed wing, fights in neighbouring Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Sunni-dominated GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

N/KOREA

North Korea ‘fires missiles’ into sea hours after UN vote

North Korea has fired six short-range projectiles into the sea, South Korea’s defence ministry has said, hours after the UN imposed tough new sanctions.

A South Korean spokesman told the Yonhap news agency the projectiles were fired at about 10:00 local time (01:00 GMT) from Wonsan on the east coast. They were either rockets or guided missiles, the ministry said.

Correspondents say it is being seen as an act of defiance against the sanctions.

Hours earlier, the UN Security Council unanimously voted to impose some of its strongest ever sanctions against North Korea. The new measures are in reaction to North Korea’s recent nuclear test and satellite launch, both of which violated existing sanctions.

They will result in all cargo going to and from the country being inspected, while 16 new individuals and 12 organisations have been blacklisted.

ANGOLA

Dozens dead, missing in Angolan flash-flood

At least 24 people, many of them children, died and dozens were missing in Angola after a flash-flood swept through a market in the southern city of Lubango, state media said on Thursday.

The Angop news agency said flood-waters from the Capitao river, swollen by nearly 24 hours of torrential rain in the area, washed through the market, where many young Angolans congregated to wash cars and bicycles.

More than 30 people were believed to be missing, Angop said.

As with much of southern Africa, southern Angola has been suffering one of its worst droughts in memory caused by a strong El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

PAKISTAN

Religious leaders slam women protection act in Pakistan

A law giving women protection from violence and abuse in Pakistan has been criticised by a religious body for being incompatible with Islam.

The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence.

The law also calls for the creation of a free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.

Since its passage in the Punjab assembly, some conservative religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Quran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.

EGYPT

Egyptian student faces US deportation for Trump comment

A student pilot from Egypt is facing deportation from the US after posting on Facebook that the world would thank him if he killed Donald Trump.

Emadeldin Elsayed, 23, has not been charged with a crime but authorities are trying to remove him from the country, his attorney, Hani Bushra, said.

Mr Elsayed is being held in a jail in Orange, California. An immigration court hearing will determine whether he will be deported.

“It seems like the government was not able to get a criminal charge to stick on him, so they used the immigration process to have him leave the country,” Mr Bushra said.