EU migrant deal not possible if Turkey's demands not met: Erdogan

Reuters 39 minutes ago 

• Comments
 
• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Share
 
• Tweet
 
• Email

PARIS (Reuters) - Turkey's migration agreement with the European Union may collapse if the EU does not keep its side of the deal on visa waivers, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told France's Le Monde newspaper.

Erdogan's comments reflect a shift in stance at a time when he is rebuking Western leaders for their response to the July 15 coup bid. Erdogan vowed to keep Turkey's promises on the migrant deal as recently as July 26.

"The European Union is not behaving in a sincere manner with Turkey," Erdogan said in comments published by Le Monde on Monday, noting that the visa waiver for Turkish citizens was supposed to kick in on June 1.

"If our demands are not satisfied then the readmissions will no longer be possible," Erdogan said.

Ankara agreed in March to stop migrants from crossing into Greece in exchange for financial aid being revived, the promise of visa-free travel to much of the EU and accelerated membership talks.

However, the reciprocal visa-free access has been delayed due to a dispute over Turkish anti-terrorism legislation and concern in the West about the scale of Ankara's crackdown following a failed coup.

Criticizing the response of Washington and European leaders to the attempted putsch, Erdogan said the Turkish people had been abandoned by the West.

"The whole world reacted to the attack against Charlie Hebdo. Our prime minister joined a rally in the streets of Paris," Erdogan said, referring to the deadly militant attack on the office of the French satirical magazine in January 2015.

"I would have hoped that the leaders of the Western world would have reacted (to the coup attempt) in the same way and not have contented themselves with a few cliches."

In Berlin on Monday, a spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry repeated that reinstatement of the death penalty in Turkey would end its bid to join the EU.

Erdogan, speaking to German television station ARD last month after the coup attempt, said the Turkish people wanted the death penalty bringing back and those governing the country should listen to them.

(Reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

When superpowers court Rodrigo Duterte

Al Jazeera Sun, Jul 31 4:00 AM PDT 

• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Tweet

"I will be chartering a [foreign policy] course [for the Philippines] on its own and will not be dependent on the United States," exclaimed Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines' firebrand president shortly after winning a historic election in May. After almost a century of strategic dependence on the US, the Philippines was now interested in charting its own destiny. Duterte presented himself as a fully fledged maverick, willing to shake up the Southeast Asian country's state of affairs, even if it came at the expense of estranging traditional allies. Not long ago, though, the Philippines' newly elected president was dismissed by many across the globe as a foul-mouthed provincial mayor. Many analysts ...

Shackled remains at ancient Greek site tell tale of intrigue

By Deborah Kyvrikosaios,Reuters 4 hours ago 

• Comments
 
• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Share
 
• Tweet
 
• Email

By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

ATHENS (Reuters) - At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.

They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect - that all remains a mystery.

They were found earlier this year in part of the Falyron Delta necropolis - a large ancient cemetery unearthed during the construction of a national opera house and library between downtown Athens and the port of Piraeus.

Few people have been able to get in to have a close look.

But on a rare tour of the site, archaeologists carefully showed Reuters the skeletons, some lying in a long neat row in the dug-out sandy ground, others piled on top of each other, arms and legs twisted with their jaws hanging open.

"They have been executed, all in the same manner. But they have been buried with respect," Dr. Stella Chryssoulaki, head of excavations, said.

"They are all tied at the hands with handcuffs and most of them are very very young and in a very good state of health when they were executed."

The experts hope DNA testing and research by anthropologists will uncover exactly how the rows of people died. Whatever happened was violent - most had their arms bound above their heads, the wrists tied together.

But the orderly way they have been buried suggest these were more than slaves or common criminals.

COUP PLOT?

The cemetery dates from between the 8th and 5th century BC.

"It is a period of great unrest for Athenian society, a period where aristocrats, nobles, are battling with each other for power," said Chryssoulaki.

One of the strongest theories is that they were supporters of Cylon, an Athenian noble and Olympic champion who staged an attempted coup in Athens in 632 BC with the help of his father-in–law, the tyrant of Megara.

The coup failed and Cylon hid in a temple of the Acropolis. He managed to escape, but the people who backed him were killed.

"Perhaps with the DNA tests that we will do on these skeletons we may confirm or not this hypothesis that these deceased, these young people could be ... part of a coup ... an attempt by a noble to take power by force," said Chryssoulaki.

More than 1,500 bodies lie in the whole cemetery, some infants laid to rest in ceramic pots, other adults burned on funeral pyres or buried in stone coffins. One casket is made from a wooden boat.

Unlike Athens' renowned ancient Kerameikos cemetery, the last resting place of many prominent ancient Greeks, these appear to be the inhabitants of regular neighborhoods.

The dig is within a 170,000 sq m landscaped park, shadowed by the vast new modern library and opera house buildings being built by the Stavros Niarchos philanthropic foundation.

High-rise apartments dot the skyline to the north while a noisy motorway snakes by the site's east side.

Chryssoulaki wants to see a museum built on the spot, as a monument to the daily lives of Athenians from another era.

"A cemetery is a first and last photograph in antiquity of those people that pass from life to death," she said.

(Editing by Michele Kambas and Andrew Heavens)

What Does 5 Years Of Data Tell You About China House Prices?

Forbes 5 hours ago 

• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Tweet

Data visualisation can be a good way to get a quick grasp of the dynamics of property markets in China, and to reveal some surprising insights. Zhongshan is one of the lower-tier cities that recorded very strong growth in house prices among 100 major cities in China. The chart-in-motion below captures five years of monthly price growth data between June 2011 and July 2016 across 100 cities in China, and illustrates where we are today in the highly cyclical Chinese residential property market. The latest data released today shows that the aggregate house price indices growth in China across 100 major cities accelerated in July to 12.4% year-on-year, stronger than 11.2% equivalent figure for June, according to the private survey data by SouFun-CREIS, but what does it look like in historical context and across the individual cities? ...

Strong earthquake strikes Northern Mariana Islands

USA Today 9 hours ago 

• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Tweet

HAGATNA, Guam — A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Saturday morning in the Northern Mariana Islands, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The strong quake was located centered 19 miles south-southwest of the island of Agrihan and about 131 miles deep. It was felt as far away as Guam, 370 miles to the south. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, based in Hawaii, issued a statement saying there is no tsunami threat because the quake’s depth. No warnings have been issued. As of 8:20 a.m. local time, an hour after the quake, there had been no reports of damage or injuries, according to the Northern Mariana Islands’s Emergency Management Office. According to the Geological Survey, deep quakes cause ...

Sunsets And Sounds: Inside The Philippines' Best Villa

Forbes 18 hours ago 

• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Tweet

There’s just something about the sunsets in the Philippines. On a recent getaway, my friends and I sat on Diniwid Beach, astonished by the orchestra of colors above us. House music echoed in the background. We slurped cocktails from fresh coconuts, cooed at the sun, and chatted with strangers from nearly every part of the globe. This is the magic of Boracay: the diversity of its visitors and community that welcomes everyone. While other regions of the country like El Nido provide the remoteness and unspoiled beauty many travelers crave, Boracay is the perfect medium for sweaty dancing and surreal sunsets. Located just a short hour flight from the capital Manila, Boracay is one of the Philippines’ ...

US military plane has unplanned landing in Russia

CNN 19 hours ago 

• Sign in to like
 
• Reblog on Tumblr
 
• Tweet

Washington (CNN)At the same time that political tensions between Washington and Moscow were raging this week, the US and Russia calmly handled the emergency landing of a US military aircraft in western Siberia, according to the Pentagon. The incident occurred Wednesday when the landing gear of a US observation flight malfunctioned and the plane had to make an unplanned landing in a Russian airstrip near the Chinese border. The OC-135B observation aircraft had taken off from a Russian airfield at Ulan Ude for a scheduled observation flight conducted under the terms of the Open Skies Treaty. ...