Greek Pasok seeks to bring down govt
ATHENS, Greece, March 27, (AP): A Greek opposition party Tuesday submitted a motion of no-confidence against the government, saying that it tried to cover up its responsibility over a deadly rail disaster last year that shocked Greece.
The Socialist Pasok party challenged the government following a newspaper report suggesting that audio leaked to the news media of rail officials had been chosen selectively to misleadingly indicate human error in the crash.
The three-day debate in parliament is due to end with a vote late Thursday.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ center-right New Democracy party holds a comfortable majority of 158 seats in the 300-member parliament, meaning that the motion is unlikely to pass. But it could increase pressure on the government, whose critics accuse it of trying to sidestep responsibility for the circumstances of the crash.
The crash in the Tempi area of central Greece occurred on the night of Feb. 28, 2023, when a passenger train smashed into an oncoming cargo train put onto the same track and heading in opposite directions. It was Greece’s deadliest railway disaster. Many of the 57 people killed were university students heading back to class after a public holiday.
Renewed public attention on the disaster has dented Mitsotakis’ majority in recent opinion polls, a little over 10 weeks before the European Parliament election in June. The crash highlighted long-standing problems with Greece’s rail safety monitoring systems, and relatives of the crash victims have been vocal in alleging a cover-up by the government of failures to implement safeguards that could have prevented the tragedy.
Charles to attend Easter Sunday service: King Charles III and Queen Camilla will attend an Easter service at the chapel at Windsor Castle on Sunday, Buckingham Palace officials said Tuesday, in the first major appearance for the 75-year-old king since he was diagnosed with cancer in February.
Officials said Charles and Camilla will be accompanied by members of the royal family at St. George’s Chapel. The event is expected to be smaller than usual. Prince William and Kate, the Princess of Wales, who announced last week that she is also undergoing cancer treatment, are not expected to attend.
The king is undergoing treatment and has suspended almost all his public engagements since his diagnosis. Officials didn’t disclose what form of cancer Charles has but said it’s not related to his recent treatment for a benign prostate condition.
Officials have said the monarch is continuing with state business, including regular weekly meetings with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and won’t be handing over his constitutional role as head of state.
Russia persists in blaming Ukraine: Russian officials persisted Tuesday in saying Ukraine and the West had a role in last week’s deadly Moscow concert hall attack despite vehement denials of involvement by Kyiv and a claim of responsibility by an affiliate of the Islamic State group.
Without offering any evidence, Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, followed similar allegations by President Vladimir Putin, who linked the attack to Ukraine even as he acknowledged that the suspects who were arrested were “radical Islamists.”
The IS affiliate claimed it carried out the attack, and US intelligence said it had information confirming the group was responsible. French President Emmanuel Macron said France also has intelligence pointing to “an IS entity” as responsible for the attack.
But despite the signs pointing to IS, Putin insisted on alleged Ukrainian involvement - something that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected, accusing the Kremlin leader of trying to drum up fervor as his forces fight in Ukraine.
‘Russian warships destroyed’: Ukraine has sunk or disabled a third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea in just over two years of war, the navy spokesman said Tuesday, a heavy blow to Moscow’s military capability.
Ukraine’s Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told The Associated Press that the latest strike on Saturday night hit the Russian amphibious landing ship Kostiantyn Olshansky that was resting in dock in Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea. The ship was part of the Ukrainian navy before Russia captured it while annexing the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.
Pletenchuk has previously announced that two other landing ships of the same type, Azov and Yamal, also were damaged in Saturday’s strike along with the Ivan Khurs intelligence ship.
He told the AP that the weekend attack, which was launched with Ukraine-built Neptune missiles, also hit Sevastopol port facilities and an oil depot.
Russian authorities reported a massive Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol over the weekend but didn’t acknowledge any damage to the fleet.
Ex-Hungarian insider releases audio: A former Hungarian government insider turned critic released an audio recording on Tuesday that he says proves that top officials conspired to cover up corruption, the latest development in a scandal that has shaken Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s domination of the country’s politics.
The country’s largest protests in years erupted in early February when it was revealed that the president had issued a pardon to a man imprisoned for covering up child sexual abuses by the director of a state-run orphanage. Close Orbán allies, including the president and Justice Minister Judit Varga, were forced to resign in the face of public outrage.
The latest allegations come from Varga’s ex-husband, Peter Magyar, a former political insider who says he has turned whistleblower to reveal the extent of the scandal.
He posted a recording on Facebook and YouTube on Tuesday featuring what appeared to Varga’s voice describing how other government officials caused evidence to be removed from court records to cover up their roles in corrupt business dealings.
“They suggested to the prosecutors what should be removed,” Varga says in the recording, which Magyar says he made during a conversation in the former couple’s apartment.