POPE MAKES PROVOCATIVE TRIP TO GREECE AS EU DEPORTS MIGRANTS

Pope Francis is known for his symbolic gestures, but even by his standards, his visit to a Greek refugee detention center as the European Union implements a controversial deportation plan is as provocative as any he has undertaken.
Francis and the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians will spend nearly an hour Saturday greeting some 250 refugees stuck on the Greek island of Lesbos. They will lunch with eight of them to hear their stories of fleeing war, conflict and poverty and hopes for a better life in Europe. And they will toss floral wreathes into the sea to pray for those who never made it.
It's a gesture Francis first made when he visited the Italian island of Lampedusa in the summer of 2013, his first trip outside Rome as pope, after a dozen migrants died trying to reach the southern tip of Europe. He made a similar gesture more recently at the U.S.-Mexican border, laying a bouquet of flowers next to a large crucifix at the Ciudad Juarez border crossing in memory of migrants who died trying to reach the U.S.
"He is slightly provocative," said George Demacopoulos, chair of Orthodox Christian studies at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York. Citing Francis' Mexico border visit in February, in the heat of a U.S. presidential campaign where illegal immigration took center stage, he added: "He is within his purview to do so, but that was a provocative move."
The Vatican insists Saturday's visit is purely humanitarian and religious in nature, not political or a "direct" criticism of the EU plan.
But spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters that Francis' position on Europe's "moral obligation" to welcome refugees is well-known, and that the EU-Turkey deportation deal certainly has "consequences on the situation of the people involved."
The Vatican official in charge of migrants, Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, was even more explicit, saying the EU-Turkey plan essentially treats migrants as merchandise that can be traded back and forth and doesn't recognize their inherent dignity as human beings.
The March 18 EU-Turkey deal stipulates that anyone arriving clandestinely on Greek islands on or after March 20 will be returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece. For every Syrian sent back, the EU will take another Syrian directly from Turkey for resettlement in Europe. In return, Turkey was granted concessions including billions of euros to deal with the more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees living there, and a speeding up of its stalled accession talks with the EU.
Human rights groups have denounced the deal as an abdication of Europe's obligations to grant protection to asylum-seekers.
The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, Francis has made the plight of refugees, the poor and downtrodden the focus of his ministry as pope, denouncing the "globalization of indifference" that the world shows the less fortunate.
Aside from the inherently political nature of the trip, it also has a significant religious dimension. Francis will be visiting alongside the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, Athens Archbishop Ieronymos II.
Lombardi said the ecumenical significance of such a meeting was "obvious" — and he credited Greece's politicians with their willingness to let the religious leaders take center stage as an "appreciated" gesture of discretion.



Source: AP

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Prosecutors: Hastert sought to hide sex abuse of 14-year-old

Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million to a person the former House speaker sexually abused when the victim was a 14-year-old wrestler on a team coached by Hastert, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday that details allegations by five former students.
The filing is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse. It chronicles a chain of deception that began with Hastert exploiting his position of trust as a teacher and coach and carried on years later to include lying to bank officials and making false claims of extortion to the FBI to conceal his wrongdoing.
The filing recommends that a federal judge sentence Hastert to up to six months in prison for violating banking laws. The sex-abuse allegations date to Hastert's time at Yorkville High School in the Chicago suburb of Yorkville from 1965 to 1981.
"While defendant achieved great success, reaping all the benefits that went with it, these boys struggled, and all are still struggling now with what defendant did to them. Some have managed better than others, but all of them carry the scars defendant inflicted upon them," the filing says.
Prosecutors say Hastert still was abusing boys when he first decided to run for office, but the now-74-year-old Republican managed to keep any hint of sexual misconduct quiet throughout a political career that carried him from the Illinois Legislature to the halls of Congress and eventually to the speaker's office, where he was second in the line of succession to the presidency.
Hastert pleaded guilty in October to breaking banking laws as he sought to pay someone identified as "Individual A" in court documents to ensure the person kept quiet about Hastert's past misconduct. Hastert is scheduled to be sentenced April 27.
A defense filing Wednesday asked the judge to give Hastert probation and spare him prison time. It cited Hastert's deteriorating health and the public shame he's already suffered.
Hastert's lawyers didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment about prosecutors' filing Friday night.
Individual A is one of at least four people cited in the filing as saying that Hastert sexually abused them as children. Three were wrestlers and the fourth was a student-manager on the team Hastert coached. Another wrestler said Hastert touched his genitals while he was on a locker room massage table, but he wasn't sure if it was intentional.
According to the document, Individual A told prosecutors the abuse occurred in a motel room on the way home from a trip to wrestling camp. Hastert, the only adult on the trip, told the 14-year-old that he would stay in his room while about a dozen other boys stayed in a different room. Individual A said Hastert touched him inappropriately after suggesting he would massage a groin injury the boy had.
The other former wrestlers told prosecutors Hastert touched them in the locker room at Yorkville High, after saying he would give them massages. Two of those wrestlers, who were ages 14 and 17, say Hastert performed sex acts on them.
The student manager was Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995, but whose sister, Jolene Burdge, had spoken to The Associated Press previously. Burdge said her brother told her that the sexual abuse lasted throughout his time at Yorkville.
In their filing, prosecutors wrote that Hastert's "history and characteristics are marred by stunning hypocrisy." He made his victims "feel alone, ashamed, guilty and devoid of dignity," they said.
"It is profoundly sad that one of their earliest sexual experiences was in the form of abuse by a man whom they trusted and whom they revered as a mentor and coach," the filing says.
Prosecutors noted the statute of limitation on any sex-abuse charges have long since run out, making the banking charges the only ones they could pursue.
"The government seeks to hold defendant accountable for the crimes he committed that can still be prosecuted," the filing says.
Hastert made 15 withdrawals of $50,000 — for a total of $750,000 — from 2010 to 2012. It's what he did next that made his actions a crime. After learning withdrawals over $10,000 are flagged, he withdrew cash in smaller increments, taking out $952,000 from 2012 to 2014.
The case has been shrouded in secrecy since Hastert was indicted in May 2015. Prosecutors only confirmed at a March hearing that sex-abuse claims were at its core.
Hastert's fear, say prosecutors, was that if he didn't pay Individual A "it would increase the chance that other former students he molested would tell their stories." Burdge had already confronted Hastert at her brother's funeral and he could see "she had been deeply affected by what defendant did to her brother, and she was likely to tell her story publicly if anyone would listen."
Court records say Hastert managed to pay $1.7 million to Individual A — handing it over in lump sums of $100,000 cash — starting in 2010. The payments stopped late in 2014 after FBI agents questioned Hastert about his cash withdrawals. Prosecutors said Friday that it was a bank compliance officer who spotted the huge withdrawals.
Pressed about the withdrawals, Hastert gave various explanations for what he was doing with the cash — that it was for vintage cars and for stocks, that he didn't trust the banks — before he finally said he was be being extorted by someone he said was making a false sex-abuse claim. Hastert agreed to let investigators record phone conversations he had with the man, and prosecutors concluded the man's tone and comments "were inconsistent with someone committing extortion."
Days after pleading guilty, Hastert entered the hospital and nearly died from a blood infection, his lawyers have said. They've also said he had a stroke and required in-home care to help him dress and complete other basic tasks.

Source: AP

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US, Philippines hold war games as China flexes muscles

Thousands of US and Filipino soldiers will on Monday launch annual war games that this year are being seen as a show of strength in the face of China's increasing assertiveness in the region.
The 11-day Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises are expected to show how the Philippines, though severely outgunned, can counter China with the help of the United States, its longest-standing ally.
China has in recent months built massive structures including radar systems and an airstrip over reefs and outcrops in the contested South China Sea, sparking international concern.
Beijing lays claim to almost all of the waters, which are important for international shipping and believed to hold valuable mineral and energy deposits, and neighbouring countries fear China could impose military controls over the entire sea.
The joint manoeuvres come ahead of a decision this year by a United Nations-backed tribunal on a legal challenge by Manila to China's territorial claims.
Adding to the tensions, the Philippines is preparing to host US troops in five bases under a defence pact born out of US President Barack Obama's plan to reassert American influence in the Pacific.
Balikatan has evolved from counter-terrorism manoeuvres against Islamic extremists like the Philippines' Abu Sayyaf, to simulations of retaking and protecting territory as disputes with Beijing have escalated.
However, Filipino and US officials insist the exercises are not explicitly aimed at China.
Balikatan spokesman Captain Celeste Frank Sayson said 55 US aircraft would take part in the drills, while the Philippines will deploy fighter jets it has recently acquired.
While no specific staging areas have been disclosed, the two allies have in recent years held war games at air bases just 230 kilometres (140 miles) from the disputed areas in the South China Sea.
Rene de Castro, an international studies professor at the De La Salle University in Manila, told AFP the drills appeared to have China's expansion in the South China Sea in mind.
"Looking at the features of Balikatan -- the mobile missile-launchers, the fighter planes -- that is an indication that the alliance is being geared for territorial defence," he said.
Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science professor at the De La Salle University in Manila, added that the exercises "aim to enhance interoperability among allies nations and signal their preparedness to confront China if necessary".
- Manila courts US, Japan -
The Philippine military said the US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), designed to shoot down aircraft, will be sent to Palawan, the Philippines' westernmost island on the South China Sea, during the war games.
The Philippines operates one airstrip in the South China Sea, on Thitu island, where there are around 350 civilian residents.
It also keeps small military contingents in smaller outcrops, including Second Thomas Shoal, where Marines are stationed on a decaying World War II ship.
The Philippines, which has one of the weakest militaries in the region, has sought to counter China's overwhelming military advantage by improving ties with the United States and Japan.
While it has acquired new fighter jets and surplus US naval ships, the Southeast Asian nation still has far to go, De Castro warned.
China's defence budget dwarfs that of the Philippines and Beijing is this year set to outspend its smaller neighbour by a factor of around 60.
The Philippines is also increasing its military engagements with the US with the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement, which took effect in January.
Under the deal, US troops will rotate through five military camps including two air bases that are strategically positioned near the South China Sea.
"It is very apparent that the thrust of (the agreement) is air power," said former national security adviser Roilo Golez.
Australia, which recently criticised China's assertiveness in the disputed waters, is sending 80 troops to join parachute drills as part of the manoeuvres, Sayson said.
Obama this week confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping over Beijing's actions in the disputed seas.
Tensions have flared between the superpowers since the US sent warships close to disputed islands twice in the past six months.

Sourcehttp://globalnation.inquirer.net/138288/us-philippines-hold-war-games-as-china-flexes-muscles

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For Clinton, a double-barreled fight against Trump and Sanders in New York

HARRISON, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton’s double-barreled fight for the presidency has arrived in her home state, where she is planning a weeks-long, hyper-local blitz to deal with the challenge of simultaneously competing against two fellow New Yorkers: Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Although New York’s primary is still nearly three weeks away, its 247 delegates are expected to make it a critical contest in determining the Democratic nomination. Both Clinton and Sanders are campaigning heavily in New York this week, marking the beginning of a potentially long slog through the state.
But Clinton also has her sights trained squarely on Trump, issuing a new ad criticizing the Republican front-runner for his proposals to ban Muslims from entering the country and build a wall along the Mexican border — and using scenes of New Yorkers of many backgrounds to make her point.
The Big Apple as backdrop for Clinton’s two-front battle is all the more resonant given that all three candidates have deep New York ties. Trump is from Queens, and his real estate empire is headquartered in Manhattan. Sanders, along with his wife, Jane, grew up in Brooklyn. Clinton, who represented New York for eight years in the Senate, calls Chappaqua, a wealthy suburb of New York City, her primary home.
Clinton faces a somewhat tricky path in competing against both men simultaneously. While the former secretary of state’s campaign is eager to pivot to the November general election, aides are also mindful that she does not appear, particularly to Sanders supporters, as if she believes she has clinched the nomination. “It’s a difficult balance to strike,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist. “She wants to pivot to the general, but she wants to do it without looking presumptuous about the primaries.”
Aides also say, however, that targeting Trump energizes the base and undermines Sanders by sending a signal to rank-and-file Democrats that she is prepared to take on Trump in the general election.
Clinton is bringing her own fighting style to the battle with these two native New Yorkers: Trump, a verbal brawler who has not spared Clinton the personal attacks that have characterized his approach to his rivals, and Sanders, a scrappy politician who is unafraid to level deep policy criticisms her way.
In her new TV ad, Clinton does not name Trump, and she brings a lighthearted touch to the critique. “When some say we can solve America’s problems by building walls, banning people based on their religion and turning against each other,” she says in the ad, “well, this is New York, and we know better.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ad.
Clinton has directly criticized Sanders. In a speech in Harlem on Wednesday, she dinged him for voting with the National Rifle Association, said he is making foreign policy an “afterthought” and called him a “single-issue candidate.”
“My opponent and I share many of the same goals,” Clinton said. “But some of his ideas for how to get there won’t pass. Others just won’t work, because the numbers just don’t add up.”
Mostly, however, Clinton is following the same hyper-local strategy in New York that she deployed in Michigan, where she focused relentlessly on the Flint water crisis; Alabama and Missouri, where she campaigned against voter-identification laws; Arkansas, where she criticized a religious-freedom bill; and Illinois and West Virginia, where anti-union legislation has been in her crosshairs.
In New York, Clinton can go a step further and tout her leadership and accomplishments while in the Senate — a strategy that her aides hope will play well against Sanders and, in particular, political novice Trump.
On Thursday, Clinton campaigned in the Westchester County suburbs, waxing nostalgic about moving nearby in 1999, before launching her Senate career. She also rapped Trump for his controversial remarks suggesting that women who seek illegal abortions should be punished — and took aim at Sanders for saying that the controversy was a distraction from the “serious” issues in the race.
“To me, it is a serious issue and this is a very serious discussion,” she said.
Clinton planned on Friday to be in Syracuse, where she is expected to focus on manufacturing jobs she has taken credit for helping bring to Upstate communities as senator.
Sanders, too, has planned an aggressive campaign in New York to draw contrasts with Clinton, aides said — particularly on issues such as the contributions Clinton and supporting political action committees have received from Wall Street interests, the fossil fuel industry and lobbyists for the gun industry.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said there are a lot of reasons Sanders should be appealing in the Empire State. He said his candidate will have “a pretty packed schedule” and plans to invest heavily in advertising before April 19. A television buy will start “in the very near future,” he said.
“People in New York appreciate authenticity, and they like a real fighter,” Weaver said. “We are 100 percent committed to contesting New York.”
As Sanders attempts to catch Clinton in the race for the nomination, a lot is at stake in New York’s April 19 contest, which offers the largest trove of pledged delegates aside from California between now and the Democratic convention.
The race is a homecoming of sorts for Sanders, who was born and raised in Brooklyn before he launched a political career in Vermont. The Sanders campaign recently opened its statewide headquarters in the borough, minutes from Clinton’s headquarters.
Voters can expect to hear a lot about Sanders’s humble roots in Brooklyn. During a swing through New York in February, he walked the street of his old neighborhood with CBS news anchor Scott Pelley and, seemingly on a whim, decided he would see whether he could get into the old “3/-room, rent-controlled apartment” where he grew up.
It turned out the apartment was vacant and being painted, and the painters let him in.
“God, I can’t believe how small it is,” Sanders said. “When you were a kid, it looked so big.”
Sanders staged a large rally Thursday night at a park in the Bronx, where guests included actress Rosario Dawson, director Spike Lee and Residente, a Puerto Rican performer and founder of the alternative rap group Calle 13. “If we win here in New York, we are going to make it to the White House,” Sanders said at the rally, which drew an estimated 18,500 people, including a large overflow crowd that didn’t get into the rally site.
Weaver argued that the bigger burden is on Clinton to show that she can carry New York by a comfortable margin, given that it is “her adopted home state” and she represented New Yorkers in the Senate for two terms. “We’ve got to do well in New York, obviously, but she has to do really well in New York,” Weaver said.
Weaver said Sanders’s campaign has a plan to catch Clinton in pledged delegates that does not require an outright win in New York. He did not provide details, though aides have acknowledged that he needs to win California and win it by a large margin.
Sanders faces the added challenge that he will not be able to count on independent voters — who have broken for him in previous contests — in the New York primary, which is closed to non-Democrats. However, the state has a potentially untapped progressive bent that resulted in competitive Democratic races at the gubernatorial level in 2014 — something that might benefit Sanders.
“If you look at New York state politics of the last four or five years, there’s been an increasing progressive tilt with regard to elections,” said Phil Singer, a former aide to Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign and a longtime aide of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Bernie is doing very, very well with liberals and progressives. I don’t think it’s a surprise that it would be a 10-point victory for Hillary as opposed to a 30-point victory for Hillary.”
Clinton has the advantage a long track record in the state, especially on economic issues, her advisers say. “If you look at her record in the Senate, that’s an important part of her story that we haven’t talked about,” said Clinton adviser Karen Finney. “There’s a lot of talk about the ’90s and not a lot of talk about what she did when she actually had a vote.”
Clinton has deployed New York’s political heavyweights, including Schumer and Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) to amplify her case to voters — and her attacks on Sanders.
As Clinton and Rangel campaigned at a Harlem bakery Wednesday, Rangel praised Sanders for calling attention to the “immoral and illegal” levels of income inequality in the United States. “Now I need some help as to what else he’s made a priority,” he said. “Bernie Sanders has always been there for social justice, and no one can challenge that. It’s just that Hillary Clinton has done something about it.”
Wagner reported from New York City.



Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-clinton-a-double-barreled-fight-against-trump-and-sanders-in-everybodys-home-state-ny/2016/03/31/1169a47a-f6ba-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html

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