NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Migrant crackdown: The Hungarian Parliament approved a package of laws in Budapest Wednesday that criminalizes the act of helping unauthorized migrants and creates a parallel court system that some fear will be used for politically sensitive cases, accelerating efforts by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to transform the country into what he calls an “illiberal democracy.” The government named the legislation, which takes effect immediately, the “Stop Soros” bill, after the Hungarian American financier and philanthropist George Soros, who has helped Hungarian rights organizations. The laws are the first major measures to be passed since Orban, who campaigned on a nationalist, anti-immigrant platform, led his far-right party, Fidesz, to an increased parliamentary majority in April, in an election that observers said was free but not fair. Their passage came on World Refugee Day, five days after Orban spoke by telephone with President Trump.
2 Tough immigration stance: A meeting of Italy’s anti-migrant interior minister with like-minded Austrian populist leaders on Wednesday in Rome heralded a new hard-line axis forming in Europe on migration issues with pledges to more firmly protect Europe’s southern border. Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, leveraged on his recent refusal to allow landfall in Sicily to a ship carrying roughly 630 migrants rescued at sea off the Libyan coast. The new Socialist government in Spain agreed to take them in, acknowledging Europe had abandoned Italy, after the tiny island nation of Malta also balked. Salvini and his Austrian counterparts — Vice Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl — signaled their common approach to reinforcing the exterior border while deferring specifics to Austria’s Europen Union presidency, and other forums. But Salvini made clear that he would continue to press neighbors to do more.
3 Peace talks: South Sudan’s warring leaders met face-toface for the first time in almost two years Wednesday amid efforts to end a five-year civil war, shaking hands but making no public comments. South Sudan President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar continued meeting into the night and were expected to continue discussions on Thursday in neighboring Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which invited them for talks as pressure grows to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and created Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
4 Romania protests: Anti-government protesters in Romania who are angry about new legislation they say will facilitate high-level corruption briefly scuffled Wednesday with police, who detained a German journalist. The protests in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, came in response to the approval lawmakers gave late Monday to revised criminal justice statutes that critics have called a setback to prosecuting corruption.
5 Drug overdoses: As many as 650 patients in a small British hospital died from overdoses of powerful painkillers that they did not need, an investigative panel reported Wednesday. Officials failed or refused to exercise proper oversight for years, the panel determined, while family members and nurses who complained were dismissed as troublemakers. From 1989 to 2000, doctors at Gosport War Memorial Hospital routinely prescribed heroin and other opioids for patients who were not in any pain, and for others whose pain should have been handled with much milder drugs.