Great Britain at The Peak

BRITAIN has within a week, set three new records. Wayne Roonney by scoring his fiftieth international goal for England in the Euro 2016 qualification match against Switzerland, set the record as the country’s highest goal scorer. Queen Elizabeth II after scoring sixty three years and seven months on the throne, became its longest serving monarch, erasing the record of her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria.

But the major record was set by Jeremy Corbyn, who as an  outsider in mainstream political leadership, and
opposed by party heavy weights, scored a landslide
victory; 59.9 percent of the over 500,000 votes, to win the leadership of the British Labour Party.

Ironically, the record-setting Queen Elizabeth was an
accidental Queen; she would not have ascended the throne had her father’s elder brother, Edward, not fallen in love with American, Wallis Simpson and deciding to abdicate rather than live without her. King Edward VIII was crowned in January, 1936. He was bent on marrying Simpson, but there were obstacles.

She was not British, had no blue blood, was lower class and was no virgin. In fact, she was twice divorced, had a string of relationships with Italian, German, and British lovers, and had sexual preferences.

The opposition to the marriage, championed by Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin, hinged its campaign on the King as the nominal head of the English Church, and the Church forbidding divorcees from remarrying.

The King suggested a morganatic marriage in which neither Simpson nor her issue would have a claim to the throne and its riches. This went to parliament and was defeated.

He decided to appeal directly to the British people, but
Baldwin told him that would be unconstitutional.

Rather than abandon his love, and remain the British
Monarch, King Edward on December 10, 1936, after only 326 days on the throne, signed the Instrument of
Abdication. He told the British people that he could no
longer remain their king without the woman he so deeply loved. He wrote a poem for Simpson saying it was better to live with her, rather than own ”A crown, A sceptre and a throne”

The lovers moved to France where they married in June
1937, and where Edward died in 1972 at 77, and his wife followed fourteen years later.

With the abdication, the “spare tyre”  Prince Albert, was crowned King George VI. His death on February 6, 1952 led to the crowning of his elder daughter, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary as Queen Elizabeth II.

But the sun had long set on the monarchy whose duties are mainly ceremonial; opening parliament, holding weekly consultations with the Prime Minister, marking the Queen’s birthday, celebrating the birth of new princes and princesses and doing philanthropy.

The monarchy has largely kept itself alive by shutting its mouth on politics, riding through scandals like
Squidgygate, Camillagate, and Fergie, and of course
managing its stupendous wealth. Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in the morning of her youth, ruled a declining world power through to the sunset of her life, and in the twilight, sets a record that the British can caress.

The earthquake in Britain is actually the rise of
Corbynism. Corbyn who has been the Member of
Parliament representing Islington North for the past thirty two years, is a nightmare to the British establishment. As the possibility of Corbyn winning the Labour leadership loomed, former party leader and ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, led the ‘stop Corbyn by all means’ charge.

An alarmed Blair, whom Corbyn charges with executing an illegal war in Iraq, told voters that Corbyn is a man of the past who lived in Alice Wonderland and that voting for him would mean the party losing the next elections. He went as far as recommending that Corbyn supporters should get “heart transplant”. Now it is Blair that would need that heart transplant, as Corbynism is the grave digger of Blairism.

Corbyn a former trade unionist who worked in the
National Union of Public Employees and the National
Union of Tailors and Garment Workers, is despite his
years in politics, a new broom that threatens to sweep the Thatcher and Blair years into the dustbin of history. He campaigned on a platform of renationalizing the railways and public utilities, ensuring no corporate tax evasion and using the increased funds to wipe out austerity.

The politician who has maintained a regular column in the MORNING STAR for over thirty years, wants to ensure public spending for infrastructure, restore public sector cuts and welfare programmes, introduce a living wage, abolish University tuition fees, restore student grants, reopen shut coal mines and get Britain out of all wars whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.

He intends to carry out Unilateral Policy on Nuclear
Disarmament and scrap Britain’s Trident Nuclear Weapons Programme. He says the 11,00 jobs supported by the programme, can be replaced by socially productive jobs in renewable energy.

Corbyn wants an Homeland for Palestinians, and although he wants Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom, he believes that people have a right to self- determination, hence his support for a united Ireland. He says the debacle in Ukraine is self- inflicted and the expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries was a mistake. “NATO expansion and Russian expansion – one leads to the other, and one reflects on the other”

He wants Britain to take in migrants from war torn
countries adding “ Real leadership starts from seeing
humans, understanding the problems they face and
working internationally to meet those challenges. Pulling up the drawbridge and condemning the outside world isn’t leadership, it is cowardice and shameful.”

All three; Queen Elizabeth II, Rooney and Corbyn, still
have records to set. The Queen still has more days,
months or probably years on the throne; Roonney is likely to score more goals, and Corbyn, likely to stage more upset in British, and perhaps, European Union politics.

The future of Britain does not depend on how long the
Queen reigns or the football career of Rooney, it will be
guided by the ideas of Corbyn and how far the British
people are prepared to run with those ideas.

The White House’s strange, illogical response to Netanyahu

To all those who imagined President Obama would not let Iran keep its illegal nuclear program and then get a green flag for breakout after 10 years , you were wrong . Yes, Obama actually is capitulating entirely after years of saying that negotiations would make clear Iran had to give up its nuclear ambitions . It was his argument that Iran wanted to be included in the family of nations , and later ( after he opposed sanctions ) his argument was that sanctions had forced Iran to the table . But now he concedes all that was wrong .

In his very odd response to Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’ s speech , Obama did not dispute he is making these huge concessions and he did not argue they are wise. Instead , he argued Netanyahu said nothing new ( well, Obama knew he had bargained away an awful lot, but many Americans did not , which is why Obama had to put it out there in an interview on the eve of Netanyahu’ s speech ) . And Obama groused that Netanyahu did not provide an alternative.

Let’ s take the latter argument . There is a whole list of
problems with the president’ s complaint .

First, the speech did contain an alternative: Hold firm
and increase sanctions . Many have said Netanyahu is
insisting on regime change . But that is not correct. He’ s demanding that Iran change its behavior , just as Obama was supposed to be demanding that Iran give up its quest for nuclear weapons . Maybe the president should say exactly what he promised : If no deal was reached , he’ d be the first one back asking for more sanctions .

Second, since when does a president demand that an ally , whom he has ignored and who has found the fatal flaw in his negotiations ( the details of which Obama has tried to conceal) , come up with a solution to get him out of his mess ? Some chutzpah. If the deal is bad, Obama has said no deal is better. What was his alternative supposed to be if no deal was the better course of action?

Third , the original deal in Obama ’ s mind is “unattainable , ” as Susan Rice insisted, because Iran said no. But how does he know Iran won’ t stay at the table or change its mind . A regime that has cheated and still is cheating and has concealed its illegal program, you might suspect , would conceal its threshold for economic pain and come up with all sorts of threats to try to keep what it has already acquired .

Perhaps Obama is just a rotten negotiator — just as we saw in his dealings with the Castros.

Fourth, I thought the president had said Iran is
“isolated , ” and his policy was working. If Iran is truly
isolated , why does he fret so that the alliance won ’ t hold together?

His arguments made no sense for all these reasons and
more because they are not real arguments, but excuses — excuses to conceal that his negotiators were inept , excuses to avoid the perception that he failed to understand the nature of the regime, and excuses for not having gotten more leverage .

It is also fascinating that Obama does not dispute
Netanyahu’ s accusation that he is seeking an alliance
with Iran to defeat the Islamic State . That in a way is a
far more grievous and fundamental error than his
nuclear negotiations posture, for it involves selling out all our allies in the region and cozying up to a nation that wants to destroy Israel , tyrannize its own people and sponsor terrorism . How could we conceivably go along with all that ? Perhaps Obama imagines that if we give Iran the bomb and let it run amok , it will change its ways. But the regime’ s behavior has gotten worse . What victorious dictatorship voluntarily gave up territory and weapons?

The president throws a fuss and tosses insults, and his
loyal lapdogs in Congress pretend to be “ insulted, ” but
right about now in Jerusalem , Cairo , Amman and Riyadh our allies are shaking their heads in disbelief.

The president is as feckless and confused as they feared . They stand unprotected by the United States as they stare into the jaws of a regime bent on destroying them . Well, perhaps they , too , will come and speak to Congress . Or Congress can invite Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Czech President Milos Zeman. It would be interesting to see whether they share Netanyahu ’ s views or Obama’ s .

And the invited guests don’ t even need to say anything new or offer us an alternative. Just tell America what they think . They can ’ t all be “electioneering ” or out to create trouble for Democrats ,can they ? Maybe it is Obama who is isolated , not Iran.

Russia's Putin says he doesn't want rerun of gas rows with Ukraine

Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that he did not want a gas conflict with Ukraine similar to ones that took place in the past, and that Kiev only had enough pre-paid gas from Russia to last two days.

Moscow cut off gas supplies to Kiev from June until
December in a dispute over pricing and unpaid bills that
marked the third such stoppage in a decade, after price rows in 2006 and 2009.

Previous "gas wars" have led to supply disruptions to
Europe, which gets around a third of its gas from Russia, and 40 percent of this via Ukraine.

Gas supplies to Europe have been unaffected by the latest row, but Ukraine's chaotic finances have left it struggling to keep up with regular pre-payment for its gas from Russia's state-controlled producer Gazprom.

"(There is) pre-paid gas for exactly two days, no action has been taken yet," Putin told a governmental meeting on Wednesday.

"I would ask the prime minister and Gazprom to pay more attention to this, given that no one needs conflicts similar to those in previous years. We are ready to strictly fulfil (our) contractual obligations, but under pre-payment only."

The European Commission helped to negotiate a "winter gas deal" between Moscow and Kiev, under which Ukraine paid off some of its gas debts and imported over 1 billion cubic metres of gas. The deal expires at the end of March.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to discuss a summer
package later this month, with Kiev winning an assurance at EU-mediated talks this week that it would not have to pay for energy delivered to rebel-held areas.

With economic output falling and a pro-Russian rebellion simmering in its eastern industrial heartland, Ukraine's gas consumption is likely to fall to some 40 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year from 42.5 bcm in 2014, the UNIAN news agency quoted the energy minister as saying.

More than 30 coal miners trapped underground after deadly explosion in Ukraine

DONETSK, Ukraine — An explosion ripped through a coal mine before dawn Wednesday in war-torn eastern Ukraine, killing at least one miner and trapping more than 30 others underground, rebel and government officials said. One injured miner reported seeing five bodies.

The explosion at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk, an eastern city under separatist control, was not caused by shelling, rebel authorities said. Eastern Ukraine has been wracked by fighting between government forces and Russian-backed rebels for almost a year, a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people.

The blast Wednesday occurred more than 1,000 metres
underground as 230 workers were in the mine, separatist authorities in Donetsk said in a statement, blaming a mixture of gas and air — a common cause of industrial mining accidents.

Rescue operations were continuing and at least 157 workers had been evacuated from the mine, Donetsk rebel officials said.

One lightly wounded miner being evacuated, who gave his name only as Sergei, told The Associated Press that he saw five bodies being pulled out, but provided no further details.

Another injured miner, 42-year-old Igor Murynin, said at a hospital in Donetsk that he was blown off his feet by the impact of the explosion.

“When I came to, there was dust everywhere. People were groaning,” said Murynin, who doctors said had burns over 20% of his body.

Murynin said the mine had installed new equipment and that nothing appeared to be out of order.

The rebels said 14 miners were sent to medical centres in Donetsk, and a doctor there, Emil Fistal, was quoted as saying that at least six were in grave condition.

There was no immediate way to reconcile the varying
numbers given of miners working, injured, possibly trapped or dead.

The speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, said he can confirm only one death, pedaling back on an earlier claim that 32 miners had died. It was unclear what his source for the information was, since rebel authorities do not
answer to the government in Kyiv.

“For now, I can say only that 32 people are below ground. One person has died,” Ivan Prikhodko, administrative head of the Kyiv district in Donetsk, where the affected mine is located, told Donetsk News Agency. “Until rescuers get to them, speaking about how many people have died would be unethical, to say

A mine rescue services representative, Yuliana Bedilo, also said only one death had been confirmed.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in Kyiv that rebels had prevented a team of 60 Ukrainian rescue workers from reaching the mine to provide assistance. But leading rebel representative Denis Pushilin denied that Ukrainian authorities had offered any help.

“If we truly need assistance, we will turn to Russia,” Pushilin was quoted as saying by the Donetsk News Agency.

Separatist officials trickled into the grounds of the mine throughout the morning, but all refused to respond to questions or provide details about how many workers were still trapped. That stance frustrated many miners’ families.

He was supposed to retire next year. Everyone is angry that they say on TV that 32 people died but nobody tells us anything,” she said.

Miners arriving for their morning shift, hours after the
accident, complained volubly about the long history of safety violations at the Zasyadko mine, which is considered particularly dangerous for its high methane content.

One, who gave only his first name, Kostya, said two of his brothers had been injured in earlier blasts at the same time

“We work like crazy for peanuts. We want this place to be safe. We want our children to be able to work here,” he told the AP.

The mine has a history of deadly accidents, including one in November 2007 that killed 101 workers, and two more in December 2007 that killed 52 miners and then five more workers.

Ninety-nine people were killed in Ukraine’s coal mines in
2014, according to mining safety oversight bodies.

Thirteen of those deaths were a direct result of the war in the east, where mines have frequently been struck in artillery duels between rebel and Ukrainian government forces.

Terrorism Case Against Pakistani Man Is Going to Jury

As arguments in Abid Naseer’s trial on terrorism
charges came to a close on Monday, jurors had
heard from British intelligence officers in
disguise, an F.B.I. attaché who observed Osama
bin Laden’s dead body and Mr. Naseer himself
arguing that he was an innocent man.

Mr. Naseer, 28, a Pakistani, is accused of
planning to attack a Manchester, England,
shopping mall in a plot by Al Qaeda that would
have also included the New York City subway
system and a Danish newspaper. But the alleged
plot was never carried out.

The strongest link between Mr. Naseer and
terrorist activity was in emails: a series of
messages that he wrote to the address
sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com that discussed
women and marriage in often-awkward phrases.

The Yahoo account was that of a Qaeda handler
who also corresponded with an admitted Qaeda
supporter and terrorist plotter, Najibullah Zazi .
Like Mr. Naseer’s emails to sana_pakhtana, Mr.

Zazi’s were full of references to his “marriage,”
which Mr. Zazi testified was code for a bombing
plot.

Mr. Naseer argued that his emails were innocent
chatter about girls with a friend he met in an
Internet chat room — who he had no idea was a
Qaeda affiliate.

Now, jurors in Federal District Court in Brooklyn
will decide which side to believe. Was Mr. Naseer
going into Tesco stores because that is what a
typical student in England would do? Or was he
scouting for bomb ingredients? Was he returning
home to Pakistan to see his family, or to train
with Al Qaeda? Did he delete all emails from his
account the day he sent his final email to the
sana_pakhtana address because he needed more
space, or because he was covering his tracks as
the attack neared?

In the government’s closing argument, a
prosecutor, Zainab Ahmad, hit on the danger of
the alleged plot.

“That man wanted to drive a car bomb into a
crowded shopping center and watch people die,”
she said.

She spent much of her time discussing the emails.
“The fact that Sohaib is emailing with the
defendant shows you the defendant is Al Qaeda,”
she said, using a name for the sana_pakhtana
account holder.

She dismissed exchanges like “How are you?” and
“What’s the weather like?” as “chitter-chatter.”

“They want to make these emails seem normal,”
Ms. Ahmad said. “They want to make sure these
emails don’t arouse suspicion.”

The important passages, she said, were those
where Mr. Naseer went into detail about women
and cars — a car bomb was one of the methods
he was considering, she said.

For instance, Mr. Naseer wrote once that a
woman named Huma seemed “weak and difficult
to convince.” That, Ms. Ahmad argued, referred
to a hydrogen peroxide bomb, which requires a
long time to become concentrated enough to
work, though the prosecutor did not point to
evidence in the trial backing up that point.

“Think about what good code it is: two guys
speaking about cars and girls,” she said.
She also highlighted apparent inconsistencies in
Mr. Naseer’s argument. In Mr. Naseer’s final
email to the sana_pakhtana address, days before
he was arrested in England, he refers to his
wedding later in the month.

Mr. Naseer had broken up with his girlfriend by
that point and was not speaking to her, Ms.
Ahmad said, making it hard to believe that he
was planning to marry her. In the email, he also
says he wishes sana_pakhtana could be at the
wedding. Either “the defendant wants his
random Internet friend to come to his wedding,”
Ms. Ahmad said, or he is alerting his Qaeda
handler that an attack is ready.

Mr. Naseer is representing himself, and much of
his summation was tedious; he spent more than
two hours reading transcripts aloud.

However, when he broke from that, he was
engaging, making eye contact with jurors as he
read from a white legal pad as he said that the
government had not proved its case.

“Did anyone say anything about the defendant’s
extremist views?” he said. “Did anyone give
evidence to the fact that Abid Naseer and his
friends were preparing explosive material?”

Did anyone say “that I’m the one who can tell
you that the defendant Abid Naseer was trained
by Al Qaeda?” he said. Did anyone “tell the court
during this trial that Abid Naseer is connected to
Al Qaeda?”

“We all know the answer. It is a two-letter word:
no,” he said.

“With all the resources, with all the PowerPoint
slides,” he said, “with all this showing off, no
promise was fulfilled.”

He argued that he had represented himself and
testified “so he can be candid and honest about
everything.”

He also told jurors that he and the men arrested
with him in Britain were released by the
authorities there because “there was insufficient
evidence to prosecute anybody by the U.K.

government,” which is consistent with earlier
accounts of the case.

Jurors will begin deliberating on Tuesday about
whether Mr. Naseer provided support to a
terrorist organization, was part of a conspiracy
providing support to a terrorist organization,
and conspired to use a destructive device (a
bomb, in this case).

China Names 14 Generals Suspected of Corruption

BEIJING — China’s military authority on Monday
released a list of 14 generals who are under
investigation or have been convicted of graft,
among them the son of one of China’s once
highest-ranking generals.

The generals were the latest prominent officers
to fall under President Xi Jinping’s sweeping
anticorruption campaign.

Published on the official website of the People’s
Liberation Army three days before China’s
rubber-stamp legislature convenes for its annual
meeting in Beijing, the list identifies a host of
leading officers, the majority of whom are in the
political and logistics departments of the
military, navy, missile corps and other branches.

The investigators’ focus on the military
bureaucracy highlights two distinct types of
corruption that the Communist Party believes
undermine military readiness, experts say:
bribery in political departments relating to the
sale of positions; and embezzlement within
logistics departments, which handle large
amounts of money as well as contracts.

Among those being investigated is Rear Adm.
Guo Zhenggang, the son of Guo Boxiong, the
retired vice chairman of the powerful Central
Military Commission, which oversees the 2.3
million members of China’s armed forces, the
world’s largest.

Admiral Guo, 45, the deputy political commissar
of military command in the coastal province of
Zhejiang, was put under investigation last month,
suspected of “serious legal violations and
criminal offenses,” a common official euphemism
for corruption.

In what appeared to be a well-timed media
campaign coordinated to discredit the admiral,
the investigative magazine Caijing published a
long exposé of his family’s corrupt land dealings
online, 10 minutes after the list of generals was
released.

According to the article, Admiral Guo’s wife and
mother-in-law were sued by investors after their
real estate company took in over 500 million
renminbi, more than $80 million, to build a five-
story hardware market that was never
completed.

Speculation that members of the Guo family were
being investigated on corruption charges has
swirled for months, despite the government’s
attempts to keep their names off social media.
Last year, the elder Mr. Guo, once the military’s
top uniformed officer, was rumored to have tried
to flee the country dressed in women’s clothing.

Although there was no proof verifying the rumor,
censors quickly blocked search terms like “Guo +
dress in drag” on the popular microblog platform
Sina Weibo, according to China Digital Times, a
website based in Berkeley, Calif., that covers
China news and digital media. Mr. Guo has not
officially been accused of corruption.

The military notice also announced that Lan
Weijie, a former deputy commander in the
central province of Hubei, was sentenced to life
in prison in January for accepting bribes,
owning property purchased with “unidentified
sources” and the illegal possession of firearms.

Last year, China’s widening military corruption
scandal ensnared the military’s former No. 2
official, Xu Caihou, who was indicted in October
on bribery charges. Mr. Xu is one of the highest-
ranking targets of the anticorruption campaign
begun by President Xi, who is also head of the
Central Military Commission.

Mr. Xi has vowed to clean up the military as part
of his campaign to strengthen party rule by
reining in corruption. The campaign comes as
China is upgrading its military capabilities to
bolster claims over disputed maritime territories
in the South and East China Seas, with an eye on
countering the influence of the United States in
Asia and the Pacific.

On Monday, the People’s Liberation Army
published a separate commentary on its website
lauding the investigations as proof that the
military was serious about fighting corruption.

“They show the military’s courage to cut the
poison off the bones with a knife and make steel
out of raging fire,” it said, adding, “Let us praise
the People’s Army that is truly worthy of the
people’s trust.”

But the military’s anticorruption drive also
appears intended to fortify Mr. Xi’s hold on
power by targeting rival factions and alerting
members of his own about the limits of
corruption he will tolerate, according to Phillip C.

Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of
Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense
University in Washington.

So far, investigators have only investigated
former senior members of the Central Military
Commission, rather than those appointed by Mr. Xi.

“It seems to be strategic in who they’re going
after and not going after,” Mr. Saunders said.
“There are people being made an example of
within the P.L.A., but it’s not the people at the
very top. This achieves the purpose of warning
them to tone down corruption without the
political cost.”

Libyan General’s Promotion Could Hinder United Nations Peace Talks

MISURATA, Libya — The speaker of Libya’s
internationally recognized Parliament named
Gen. Khalifa Hifter on Monday to the recently
created position of commander in chief of the
army, potentially hindering United Nations-
sponsored talks to end the country’s internal
strife.

General Hifter has had many roles: He was an
ally of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi when he came
to power; later became an opponent; returned to
join the uprising against him in 2011; and last
year announced an abortive military takeover of
Libya’s transitional government.

Since the spring of 2014, General Hifter has been
leading a military campaign with the stated goal
of ridding Libya of Islamists, whether they are
the extremists based in and around Benghazi or
the more moderate politicians who played a
major role in the first transitional Parliament.

A narrow majority of Libya’s internationally
recognized Parliament has been seated since last
summer in Tobruk, an eastern Libyan town
under Mr. Hifter’s control, where it has aligned
itself with his efforts. His appointment on
Monday for the first time gives him formal
legitimacy as the top military commander under
that government. The appointment should
ostensibly make General Hifter accountable to
Parliament.

But he and certain regional militias allied with
him are fighting a rival militia coalition that
includes both hard-line and more moderate
Islamists, and that coalition, known as Libya
Dawn, considers the general an aspiring autocrat
and its greatest enemy. Libya Dawn controls the
capital, Tripoli. It claims its own provisional
Parliament and prime minister, and it includes
the city of Misurata on the central coast.

The United States, Britain and other allies have
been hoping to help broker an agreement
between the two factions. They have threatened
to use sanctions to isolate those on either side
who oppose a reconciliation, including trying to
marginalize the Islamist extremists in the Dawn
faction and General Hifter, who christened his
military campaign Operation Dignity. His
appointment as commander in chief may make it
harder to separate him from the Tobruk-based
Parliament and the rest of the faction.

Many in eastern Libya have embraced General
Hifter as their best hope to tame extremist
militias that have dominated the eastern city of
Benghazi and to restore order to Libya. But
seemingly everyone in the Libya Dawn coalition,
meanwhile, rejects any government that includes
him.

“He just wants to be on top of the throne,” said
Fathi Bashaagha, a local leader in Misurata who
has participated in, and argued for, the unity
talks. “If any unity government appoints Hifter,
he will eat the unity government.”

Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds

BERLIN — The European Union will fail to meet
an ambitious goal of significantly reducing
greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 unless it takes
more aggressive measures to limit the use of
fossil fuels and adopts new environmental
policies, according to a report scheduled for
release on Tuesday.

Although European countries are on track to
meet, and even surpass, the goal of reducing
1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 20
percent by 2020, existing policies are not robust
enough to ensure that the 2050 targets are met,
the report said. Those targets, scientists have
said, are critical to forestalling the most
catastrophic effects of climate change , which are
linked to carbon emissions caused by human
activity.

“The level of ambition of environmental policies
currently in place to reduce environmental
pressures may not enable Europe to achieve long-
term environmental goals, such as the 2050 target
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95
percent,” the report said.

The report also noted that transportation
continues to account for a quarter of all carbon
emissions within the European Union, and
reducing those by 60 percent by 2050 will require
“significant additional measures.”

The report, which will formally be released on
Tuesday, was compiled by the European
Environment Agency, based in Copenhagen, and
is produced every five years to assess how the
Union is progressing toward its environmental
goals and to inform European policy. It will be
presented to the European Commission and
debated in the European Parliament later this
month.

The findings are significant because Europeans
have taken a lead role in seeking to avert the
worst effects of climate change , in some cases
putting aside their own economic prospects and
political pressures to enact policies that could also
serve as models for other countries and regions.

The European Union’s failure to achieve its goals
could discourage efforts by more reluctant
nations, like China and India, and could loom
large later this year as nations gather in Paris to
discuss a global climate treaty.

Hans Bruyninckx, the executive director of the
European Environment Agency, characterized
the report as an alarming call that provides the
28 European Union member states with a fresh
opportunity to set a global example.

“Although we have colored the outlook red, it
doesn’t have to be red,” Mr. Bruyninckx said. He
named increased energy efficiency, ecological
innovation and improvements to transportation
systems as potential areas in which Europeans
could adjust their policies to meet their long-term
goals.

“Although we have all of these very different
countries with very different energy profiles, in
the long run, the commitment to these targets is
there, the level of ambition to reach the 80
percent is high on the political agenda,” Mr.
Bruyninckx said.

Setting global emissions targets, however, has
proved elusive for years, and the latest
assessment of Europe’s progress illustrates that
once targets are reached, significant difficulties
remain in holding countries to their agreed-to
goals.

Even a country like Germany, where support for
the environment borders on a religion, has faced
unforeseen challenges as it aims to revamp its
energy sector from reliance on traditional
sources of energy, such as nuclear and fossil
fuels, to renewable sources, including wind, solar
and biofuels.

The race to shutter the country’s nuclear reactors
by 2022, for example, has resulted in many
power providers using brown coal, or lignite, the
cheapest and dirtiest of all fossil fuels to keep the
power flowing to customers. This, in turn, has led
to an increase in carbon emissions.

According to the report, Germany, whose
economy is the best in Europe, was the only
country with a significant rise in both its
emissions reductions and energy consumption
last year. Along with Belgium, it is one of only
two countries not on track to meet its 2020
targets in either category. According to the
German Association of Energy and Water
Industries, the country increased its carbon
omissions by 20 million tons from 2012 to 2013,
instead of reducing them.

In order to meet its goals, Germany must reduce
emissions annually by 3.5 percent over the next
six years, a feat that will result in substantial
increases in energy costs, and generate political
pressure to block measures that could hurt the
economy.

Harro van Asselt, a researcher at the Stockholm
Environment Institute’s Oxford Centre, said
Germany saw a drop in emissions after many
polluting industrial sites in the former East
Germany were shuttered between the late 1990s
and early 2000s. The closings occurred just as
Europe began tackling climate change, which
assisted the European Union in meeting its 2020
targets, he said.

“The question is not why they might stumble
now; the main question is why did they reach
their targets before,” Mr. van Asselt said.
Now the hard part begins, he said, as the
European Union faces the need to undertake
more difficult and costly measures in areas like
transportation and agriculture to ensure that
emissions targets remain on track.

“As long as the European Commission doesn’t
undertake more measures in these sectors, they
are going to have difficulties in even reaching
their goals for 2030,” Mr. van Asselt said.
Globally, the environmental news is not all bleak.
The United States failed to adopt the Kyoto
Protocol in 1997, in part because Congress feared
it would hurt the country economically. But last
year President Obama and President Xi Jinping
of China reached an agreement that set new goals
for those countries to curb their carbon
emissions within the next 15 years. The deal was
seen as a breakthrough, helping to resolve some
of the differences between two of the world’s
biggest polluters, whose dispute was partly the
reason a climate agreement was not reached in
Copenhagen in 2009.

European leaders are counting on recent
international efforts to help reach a global
agreement in Paris. The most recent report
issued by the United Nations last year warned
that failure to reduce emissions could alter the
climate so drastically that it could endanger life
as we know it. The Europeans hope this added
pressure, coupled with the moral example they
tried to set decades ago, will contribute to a
lasting global agreement on emissions
reductions.

“I think the role of Europe is essential and we
have demonstrated that we can make solid
multinational agreements that can work,” Mr.
Bruyninckx said.

Toronto Police Say Tunnel Mystery Is Solved

OTTAWA — Toronto’s mystery tunnel has turned
out to be a place for a couple of guys to get away
from it all, more a “man cave” than a terrorist
threat.

After being stumped for more than a month by a
33-foot-long, hand-dug and carefully reinforced
tunnel to nowhere, the Toronto Police said
Monday that they had identified two men in their
20s who did the backbreaking work.

“These two guys dug a hole to hang out,” a
getaway, Constable Victor Kwong said. He added,
“Kids do it, but I’ve never seen anyone in their
20s do it.”

Because the tunnel — which was narrow, damp
and lined with plywood and lumber — was near
a tennis complex at York University, which will
host Pan American Games events this summer,
there had been speculation that the hole was
intended for some sort of a terrorist attack.

Constable Kwong said its creators’ identities were
discovered through a public appeal for
information last week. After interviewing the
men and people who know them, Constable
Kwong said, “We are comfortable that there was
no criminal intention, no nefarious reason for
the tunnel.”

The men have not been charged with a crime, so
the police are not releasing their names.

“The thing is that people think that there’s a lot
more to this than there is,” said Mark Pugash,
another police spokesman.

The men selected the heavily wooded area for its
seclusion and proximity to their neighborhood,
Constable Kwong said. The pair, he added, have
no connection to the university, the tennis
facility or the Pan Am Games.

After coming across a pile of earth from the
excavation in January, a conservation officer
discovered the tunnel entrance hidden under dirt
and leaves. In a smaller hole nearby was an
electrical power generator that operated its
lights, an air compressor and a sump pump. A
plywood cover in that hole was lined with foam,
apparently intended to muffle the sound of the
generator.

While the tunnel appeared to be expertly
reinforced with plywood and 2-by-8-inch
lumber, Constable Kwong said that the tunnelers
have no training in construction or carpentry.
The police filled in the tunnel as a safety
measure.

“It’s not that we’re saying it’s O.K. to dig a hole
anywhere,” Constable Kwong said.
But even if the tunnelers have breached
municipal bylaws or conservation regulations,
they apparently have nothing to fear. Rick
Sikorski, a spokesman for the Toronto and
Region Conservation Authority, said that given
that the police had closed their case, it did not
plan to pursue the men.

Figures From U.S.-Led Coalition Show Heavy 2014 Losses for Afghan Army

WASHINGTON — The Afghan Army lost more
than 20,000 fighters and others last year largely
because of desertions, discharges and deaths in
combat, according to figures to be released
Tuesday, casting further doubt on Afghanistan ’s
ability to maintain security without help from
United States-led coalition forces.

The nearly 11 percent decline from January to
November 2014, to roughly 169,000 uniformed
and civilian members from 190,000, is now an
issue of deep concern among some in the
American military. For example, the former No.

2 American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen.
Joseph Anderson, called the rate of combat deaths
unsustainable before he departed at the end of
last year.

Concern over how soon Afghan forces will be
ready to stand on their own is one reason that
the Obama administration is weighing whether it
should slow the withdrawal of American troops,
the bulk of whom are supposed to be out by the
end of 2016.

The newly available numbers also lay bare the
challenge faced by the 10,000 American troops
and thousands of private contractors who have
remained in Afghanistan since the end of the
combat mission in December to help prepare
Afghan forces to fight the Taliban on their own.

The American-led military coalition, citing
internal figures, said the Afghan Army’s size had
inched back up in the past few months, reaching
about 173,000 in January. But that would still put
the army at its smallest level since the fall of
2011, when the American project to build viable
Afghan security forces was still in its early stages
and the coalition did almost all the fighting
against the Taliban militants.

More than three years on, the American combat
mission is now over and the Afghan military is
supposed to be fully in charge of securing its
own country. But the army, along with the
Afghan police, struggled last year to hold back a
resurgent Taliban, and Afghan forces remain far
more reliant on American air support, logistics
and raids by Special Operations forces than the
Obama administration had intended going into
this year.

Most of the losses in the Afghan Army over the
past year appear to be due to desertion, the
coalition said in a written response to questions
about the newly declassified data. Smaller
percentages came from ordinary discharges and,
more worryingly, from deaths in combat, of
which there were more than 1,200 last year, a
record for the army.

But no matter the reasons, the numbers cast a
harsh spotlight on one inescapable fact: The
army, the centerpiece of the American-led
campaign to stabilize Afghanistan, is losing
people far faster than it can replace them. The
rate of decline, if not reversed, could leave the
army effectively incapable of fighting the Taliban
across much of Afghanistan within the next year
or two, according to some American military
officials and analysts.

The data being released on Tuesday — a month
after the American military abruptly reversed its
decision to keep data about the Afghan security
forces classified — is being published by the
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction, an American government
watchdog agency that puts out quarterly reports
on American spending in Afghanistan.

Until late last year, the inspector general’s
reports regularly included details about Afghan
forces, such as the size of the army and the
police. Then the American military command in
Afghanistan decided to classify most of the basic
data it had been supplying about the Afghan
Army and police. It argued that the public
release of the data would imperil Afghan and
coalition forces.

That decision provoked sharp criticism from
Congress and within the command itself when it
became public in January. The military reversed
itself about a week later, saying that, upon
further review, it could safely release the
information.

The American command has not elaborated
further on its decision. But ahead of the release
of the data on Tuesday it said that it was working
with the government of Afghanistan to make
leadership changes in the Afghan Army in an
effort to stem the desertion rate, which has been
a problem for years.

The coalition said it was also helping to improve
the Afghans’ ability to evacuate wounded soldiers
from the battlefield and get them properly
treated, and training and equipping Afghan
forces to better find and neutralize improvised
explosive devices, which remain the most deadly
weapon in the Taliban’s arsenal.

Since the United States and its allies began
building Afghan forces in earnest in 2009, the
size of the Afghan Army has oscillated,
sometimes falling by thousands of troops from
month to month. Desertion has been a persistent
problem, and the army has never reached its
target strength, which currently stands at 195,000
people.

But the long-term trend appeared to be generally
upward until the start of 2014, when Afghan
forces took on the lead combat role across the
country — and the army’s numbers started what
would become an 11-month decline.

The report, which was provided to The New York
Times ahead of its release, was supposed to be
published last week. But a day before its
scheduled release, the coalition command in
Afghanistan quietly informed the inspector
general that it had been supplying incorrect data
on the size of the Afghan Army through all of last
year.

The incorrect data overestimated the strength of
the army by thousands of troops. At one point
last year, the incorrect data counted nearly
14,000 more Afghan troops than there now
appears to have been at the time.

The coalition attributed the problem to what it
called an accounting error, and offered no
further explanation, the inspector general’s
report said. It remains unclear whether data for
years before 2014 was similarly corrupted.

Bus Driver in Delhi Gang Rape Blames Victim

NEW DELHI — In the months after a young
woman was brutalized and gang-raped on a
moving bus in New Delhi in 2012, thousands of
politicians, activists and ordinary citizens
crowded onto India’s airwaves and into its public
spaces to say their piece about the crime.

But there was no comment from the six slight,
ordinary-looking men accused of her murder.
Whisked in and out of the courtroom past
shouting crowds of journalists, they listened
impassively to testimony and offered
monosyllabic answers on the stand. Courtroom
guards said they hummed Bollywood tunes under
their breath. Their opinions were anyone’s guess.

Now, in his first in-depth interview, one of the
men, Mukesh Singh, has told a British filmmaker
that the young woman invited the rape because
she was out too late at night.

“You can’t clap with one hand,” said Mr. Singh,
who drove the bus during the crime but denied
taking part in the assault. “It takes two hands. A
decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at
night. A girl is far more responsible for rape
than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal.

Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not
roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong
things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 percent
of girls are good.”

The woman, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student,
had been to see “Life of Pi” with a male friend,
and they both boarded the private bus without
realizing that the six men aboard had been
driving the streets in search of a victim. After
knocking her friend unconscious, they took her
to the back of the bus and raped her, then
damaged her internal organs with an iron rod.

An hour later, they dumped the pair out on the
road, bleeding and naked. She died two weeks
later of her injuries.

In the interview, for a film that will air Sunday
on the BBC , Mr. Singh said the woman had
provoked the deadly assault by resisting the rape.
“When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back,” he
told the filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, according to a
transcript provided by the BBC. “She should just
be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have
dropped her off after ‘doing her,’ and only hit
the boy.”

In footage from the film, Mr. Singh tonelessly
narrates the assault, saying that he heard her
screaming for help but that his brother instructed
him to keep driving as they “dragged her to the
back” and “went turn by turn.” Afterward, he
said, he saw the youngest of the assailants, who
was 17 at the time of the crime, withdraw
something from her body.

“It was her intestines,” Mr. Singh said. “He said,
‘She’s dead. Throw her out quickly.’ ”
He called the killing “an accident.”

Ms. Udwin, at a news conference in New Delhi,
said the film crew interviewed Mr. Singh for 16
hours and saw no sign of remorse. “He is almost
like a robot,” she said. “I tried every trick to get
a tear in his eye, but nothing. No tear.”

Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday
demanded an explanation from the Tihar Jail,
where Mr. Singh is incarcerated, as to why they
had allowed the interview while the case was
pending trial.

The prison authorities in Tihar told The Indian
Express, a daily newspaper, that they are in the
process of filing a legal notice against the BBC for
violating its agreement to submit the footage for
approval. The filmmakers said that they
submitted the footage, and that it was approved.

According to police records, the six men divided
the pair’s possessions: Mr. Singh took one mobile
phone, and Vinay Sharma, a 20-year-old gym
instructor, took the other. Pawan Gupta took the
man’s watch and 1,000 rupees cash, a little less
than $20. Akshay Kumar Singh, a bus cleaner,
took the woman’s rings. The juvenile was given a
bank card and some cash from the spoil.

Mr. Singh’s brother, Ram Singh, hanged himself
with his bedsheet in his prison cell months before
the trial. The juvenile defendant, whose identity
was never made public in accordance with
Indian law, was sentenced to three years in a
detention center — the heaviest sentence possible
in India’s juvenile justice system. The remaining
four men pleaded not guilty; they are appealing
their death sentences.

Mr. Singh told the filmmaker that he believed the
harsh sentences, instead of acting as a deterrent,
would drive more rapists to kill their victims in
the future. “Now, when they rape, they won’t
leave the girl like we did,” he said. “They will kill
her. Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her
alone. She won’t tell anyone.’ Now, when they
rape, especially the criminal types, they will just
kill the girl. Death.”

Reduce Embassy Staff. Venezuela Tells U.S

CARACAS, Venezuela — With diplomatic relations
fraying rapidly between the United States and
Venezuela, the government of President Nicolás
Maduro has given the American Embassy here 15
days to come up with a plan to drastically shrink
its staff, Venezuela’s foreign minister announced
Monday.

Mr. Maduro has repeatedly accused the United
States of supporting a plot to overthrow him, and
on Saturday he announced a series of diplomatic
measures that he said were intended to halt
American meddling.

He said the United States would have to reduce
the number of officials at its embassy to a
number similar to the staff at the Venezuelan
Embassy in Washington. He said there were 100
American officials here and just 17 Venezuelan
officials in Washington, although those numbers
have not been verified by the State Department.

“Regarding the reduction to 17 officials with
which the Embassy of the United States in
Venezuela must operate, they were given 15 days
to present a plan as to the classification and rank
of the officials that will remain,” the foreign
minister, Delcy Rodríguez, said at a news conference.

She said the change was in keeping with “the
reciprocity that should govern relations between
sovereign states.” The United States denies Mr.
Maduro’s claim that it is involved in any plan to
overthrow him, saying he is seeking to deflect
attention from the country’s worsening economic crisis.

Mr. Maduro also said Saturday that Americans
traveling to Venezuela would now need visas to
enter the country and that they would have to
pay a fee equal to what Venezuelans pay for a
visa to the United States.

Mr. Maduro’s anti-Washington language was
tamped down for several weeks after the
surprise diplomatic opening between the United
States and Cuba, a close ally of the Caracas
government.

But last month, as pressure grew on Mr. Maduro
to address the country’s many economic ills, he
once again stepped up accusations against the
United States.