News in Brief

LONDON:

A British judge said Monday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange must attend his next court hearing unless he can provide medical evidence to support his absence.

Lawyers for Assange said he could not attend the latest hearing on his US extradition case by video link from prison for medical reasons.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser set another hearing date of July 27 and said Assange must appear “unless there is medical evidence” to explain his nonattendance.

The 48-yearold Australian has been indicted in the US on 18 charges over the publication of classified documents. Prosecutors say he conspired with US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password, hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (AP)

LONDON:

Assange

A 25-year-old Libyan asylum-seeker accused of stabbing three men to death with a kitchen knife as they sat in an English city park made his first court appearance on Monday but didn’t enter a plea.

Khairi Saadallah faces three counts of murder and three of attempted murder over the June 20 attack in Reading, 40 miles (64 kms) west of London.

Friends James Furlong, 36, David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, were enjoying a warm Saturday evening in the town’s Forbury Gardens park when they were stabbed. Each died from a single stab wound. Three other men were injured.

Police have declared the stabbings a terror attack.

Prosecutor Jan Newbold said Saadallah stabbed his victims “without warning or provocation,” while shouting “words to the effect of ‘Allahu akbar’” – the Arabic phrase for God is great. (AP)

BRUSSELS:

European Union and UK negotiators resumed in-person talks on a post-Brexit trade deal on Monday, with both sides insisting that the process must accelerate markedly if they’re to reach an agreement by the end of the year.

The UK left the world’s biggest trading bloc on Jan 31. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided for good that the transition period meant to ease the country out of the bloc would not be extended beyond Dec 31.

It came despite major differences between the two sides about their future relations.

“We took note that for the United Kingdom, they don’t have the intention to ask for an extension of the transition period. It means that we need to intensify the negotiations,” EU Council President Charles Michel said on June 19, after chairing a summit of the bloc’s leaders. (AP)

PARIS:

Nuclear workers lamented the switching off Monday of France’s oldest nuclear reactor, a closure celebrated by anti-nuclear campaigners.

The last of two 900-megawatt reactors at Fessenheim was being powered down and taken offline overnight, part of a policy shift to reduce France’s worldleading dependence on nuclear power.

The No. 1 reactor at the plant on the border with Germany was shut down in February.

Workers at electricity giant EDF, which operates Fessenheim and France’s 18 other nuclear plants, described the closure as a tough blow.

“All the employees are mourning,” tweeted the CGT union at the plant, with a photo of someone wearing a black armband.

“It’s the carrying out of a death sentence,” said Philippe Page Le Merour, a CGT representative. (AP)

NIZHNY TAGIL, Russia:

In 2011, the industrial city of Nizhny Tagil was dubbed “Putingrad” for its residents’ fervent support for Russian President

Vladimir Putin.

Nine years later, it appears the city 1,400 kms (870 miles) east of Moscow no longer lives up to that nickname.

Workers are speaking out against the constitutional changes that would allow Putin to stay in office until 2036 amid growing frustration over their dire living conditions, which have not improved despite all the promises.

“I am against the constitutional changes, most importantly because they are a coronation of the czar, who reigns but does not rule – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” says Nikolay Nemytov, a 43-year-old engineer at Russian Railways, a state-run monopoly. He says his monthly salary, the equivalent of $430, is not nearly enough.

Anton Zhuravlyov, a 33-year-old operator at the Nizhny Tagil Iron and Steel Works Plant, or NTMK, agrees with him on the vote. (AP)

PRISTINA, Kosovo:

Kosovo’s president on Monday denied committing war crimes during and after a 19981999 armed conflict between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serbia, and said he would resign if an indictment against him is confirmed.

Hashim Thaci said in a televised address to the nation that there was no evidence he broke the law. Last week, a prosecutor at a Kosovo court based at The Hague said he had filed charges against Thaci, former Speaker Kadri Veseli and a group of other former independence fighters. They were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The charges say they are “criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders” of Serbs and Roma, as well as Kosovo Albanian political opponents, including enforced disappearances, persecution and torture. The list of charges was made public last week, but a pretrial judge at The Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers hasn’t made a decision on whether to proceed with the case or throw it out.

Thaci was confident that the case wouldn’t go ahead. (AP)

WARSAW, Poland:

Poland’s conservative president, Andrzej Duda, promised Monday to protect traditional Polish values against LGBT rights after a first-round presidential election that gave him the most votes but forced him into a runoff.

Duda’s immediate return to a theme that he has raised frequently during his campaign was an indication that he is heading into a tight runoff with Warsaw’s centrist mayor by seeking to win the votes of those on the far right, not the political center.

Nearly complete results from Sunday’s balloting show that Duda, who is backed by the populist ruling Law and Justice party, won nearly 44 percent of the votes.

In second place was Rafal Trzaskowski, the pro-European Union mayor, with slightly over 30 percent.

The two will face each other in a July 12 runoff that is shaping up as a suspenseful standoff between two 48-yearold politicians who represent opposing sides of a bitter cultural divide. (AP)