GREECE
Hundreds missing in shipwreck
A shipwreck survivor in front of the warehouse where they are housed in the port of Kalamata, Greece, June 14, 2023
© / afp.com/Angelos Tzortzinis
Having left Libya, they wanted to reach Italy. Between 400 and 750 migrants – Pakistanis, Syrians, Egyptians, Afghans and Palestinians – were on board the old trawler which sank on June 14 off the island of Pylos. Only 104 could be rescued. Some “said that the Coast Guard [grecs] tied the ship with a rope and tried to pull it, causing [son] sway”, reports Politico. This would have been detached before the sinking, a point that an investigation must clarify. Nine alleged smugglers were arrested among the survivors, as well as 10 people in Pakistan, suspected of belonging to the same network.
SPAIN
The PP-Vox alliance is gaining momentum
Following the general elections on 23rd July the next Spanish government could be made up, for the first time, of a coalition of the right (People’s Party, PP) and the extreme right (Vox). Their alliance has already imposed itself in a dozen large cities, on June 17, during the installation of municipal teams.
“A Black Saturday for the Socialist Party [du Premier ministre Pedro Sanchez] and the left as a whole”, point ABC. The Conservatives’ “pacts with Vox” – who are 5 to 9 points ahead of the Socialists in the polls – have already “tilted the axis of political power”, continues the daily.
CHINA
Blinken in appeasement operation
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on June 19, 2023.
© / afp.com/Leah MILLIS
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on June 19 for the first time since Joe Biden took office. This meeting alone shows that “this two-day diplomatic mission in China stabilizes the otherwise tense relationship between the two largest economies in the world”, believes Bloomberg. According to this media, the simple fact that the leader of American diplomacy can sit down with the Chinese president is perceived as a success in Washington “and nourishes the hope of an improvement in a relationship which has reached its highest point. low level for decades”.
UNITED KINGDOM
Boris Johnson’s rebound
THE DailyMail revealed, on June 16, the identity of its mysterious “new scholarly columnist”: former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. For a contract of one million pounds a year, he signed his first editorial in the conservative daily on an unexpected subject: his disappointment after trying a slimming drug.
“In the future, he should use this platform to be the thorn in the side [du Premier ministre] Rishi Sunak”, notes the Guardian, which points to a new oddity of “Bojo”: he would have violated the ministerial code by warning the authorities too late of his new position, at the risk of conflict of interest.
UNITED STATES
Biden campaigning with unions
US President Joe Biden at the White House, June 6, 2023 in Washington
© / afp.com/ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
Two months after the announcement of his candidacy for the presidency of 2024, Joe Biden found the boards for his first meeting, on June 17, in Philadelphia. To launch his campaign, the 80-year-old president praised his economic record and chose to address the unions, his historical supporters, from his native state of Pennsylvania. “Biden built his political identity on his connection to the labor movement as evidence of his commitment to middle-class families, decrypted Politico. He also knows how to use trade unions to organize and mobilize the electorate.”
SOUTH AFRICA, SENEGAL, ZAMBIA, COMOROS
African mediation goes “pschitt”
Led by the presidents of South Africa, Senegal, Zambia and the Comoros, an African “peace mission” arrived in Kiev – then bombarded by the enemy – on June 16, before going to Saint Petersburg on the 17th. The Ukrainian president rejected his offer of mediation, denouncing a “deception” by Moscow, which for its part considered the proposals “very difficult to implement”.
“It is certainly the first time in the history of South Africa that its leader has been in a city [Kiev] against which missiles are launched by a “friendly” nation which knew it was there”, ironically Daily Maverick.
MALI
UN force expelled
This is the final stage in the relationship between the Malian authorities and their former partners: the colonels asked for the 16th which points to a new oddity of Johnson: “BoJo”: would have violated the ministerial code by warning the authorities too late of his new position, at the risk of the conflict of interests.s.hec” of this mission before the UN Security Council. “This announcement was already in the pipes since the United Nations published, last month, an explosive report and particularly damning for the Malian army” [dénonçant ses exactions], specifies the Burkinabé newspaper The country.