Lesbos, Greece/Geneva. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has asked Europe to help in handling tens of thousands of refugees coming in from Syria, Afghanistan and other war zones, saying on Friday his cash-strapped country could not deal with them alone.

The influx has piled pressure on Greece’s services at a time when its own citizens are struggling with harsh cuts and its government is negotiating with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for fresh loans to stave off economic collapse.

Boatloads of migrants arriving every day had triggered a “humanitarian crisis within the economic crisis,” Tsipras said after a meeting with ministers.

“The EU is being tested on the issue of Greece. It has responded negatively on the economic front – that’s my view. I hope it will respond positively on the humanitarian front,” he said.

The comments came as the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, called on Greece to take control of the “total chaos” on Mediterranean islands where thousands of migrants have landed. About 124,000 have arrived this year by sea, many via Turkey, according to Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR director for Europe.

“The level of suffering we have seen on the islands is unbearable. People arrive thinking they are in the European Union. What we have seen was not anything acceptable in terms of standards of treatment,” Cochetel said after visiting the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kos and Chios.

“I have never seen a situation like that. This is the European Union and this is totally shameful,” he added.

Squalid conditions

At a makeshift refugee center at Kara Tepe, a hilltop about 5 kilometers north of Lesbos Island’s main town of Mytilene, about 50 white tents provided by the local council struggled to accommodate the waves of people coming in daily.

Trash littered the area and locals said 16 toilets were frequently blocked despite attempts by authorities to keep the area clean.

Up to 10 people could be seen sharing one of the tents, while others lay on pieces of cardboard, jostling for space under the shade of olive trees in sweltering heat.

“The government had battles on plenty of fronts and probably could not give as much attention to the problem,” the island’s mayor, Spiros Galinos, told Reuters.

The UNHCR’s Cochetel said Greece had to step up its response.

“We’ve told the Greek authorities that if it was a natural disaster, there would be mobilization of other assets including from the ministry of defense,” he said.

“It’s easy, there are plenty of empty army barracks in Greece, there is plenty of uncultivated land that could be rented and sites could be developed.”

Tsipras said the problem was a European issue and not just a Greek one. He said ministries would coordinate to help relieve the burden on distant islands and that a special unit would be set up to make use of dedicated EU funds to beef up border controls and integrate migrants into society.

“The immigrant flow to Greece is beyond of what our state infrastructure can handle,” Tsipras said. “We have significant problems to face it and that’s why we have asked help from EU.”

The country, stuck in a seven-year financial crisis, has returned to recession again and narrowly averted bankruptcy this year by agreeing a bailout deal.

The EU has sought to share the burden of the refugees across its member countries, but the response has been mixed. EU leaders have pledged to relocate 16,000 migrants over two years, which Cochetel called “far too little and too late.”

Britain has said it will not participate. It is currently struggling with its own crisis as thousands of migrants seek to enter via the Channel Tunnel.

Reuters

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Baghdad. More than 2,000 Iraqis in the northern province of Nineveh have been executed by Islamic State militants controlling the area, the defense minister said on Friday in a recorded statement.

Ministry officials could not confirm when or how the deaths had occurred and Reuters was unable to immediately confirm the government’s claims.

Access is severely restricted in large parts of Iraq’s north and west, which Islamic State militants have controlled since sweeping across the Syrian border in mid-2014 in a bid to establish a caliphate.

Witnesses and sources at a morgue in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, told Reuters that most of the executions reported on Friday had occurred over the past six months.

The majority of the victims, killed for common crimes like theft, had been buried earlier, but the bodies of journalists and former Iraqi police or soldiers were delivered to the morgue earlier on Friday, the sources said. They said IS had circulated lists containing the victims’ names.

“[Islamic State] assassinated in cold blood … 2,070 residents of Nineveh for … not cooperating with them,” Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi said in a video posted on the ministry’s website.

Interviews with residents in January revealed how Islamic State had created a police state strong enough to weather severe popular discontent in Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, which fell to the insurgents after Iraqi forces collapsed.

Parliament Speaker Saleem al-Jabouri condemned the reported executions on Facebook as “a historical crime of genocide.”

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the killings came in response to Islamic State’s losses in Anbar, where pro-government forces launched a campaign last month to roll back the seizure of Ramadi and other areas.

Baghdad and its allies have had to modify expectations of swiftly routing IS there after confronting the reality of a weakened fighting force, sectarian sensitivities in the predominately Sunni province, and political tensions including an Iranian-Western fight for influence.

Reuters

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Akron, Ohio. PGA Tour veteran Jim Furyk has twice come agonizingly close to victory at Firestone, and on Friday he put himself in a good position to finally cross the finish line here in top spot.

The 45-year-old American fired a four-under-par 66 for a second day in a row at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational to establish a commanding four-stroke halfway lead.

Although he still has 36 holes left at the World Golf Championships event, Furyk has an extra bounce in his step after ending a five-year title drought on the PGA Tour in April.

“It’s nice to get some confidence,” Furyk told reporters as he reflected on his playoff victory four months ago at the RBC Heritage. He had finished runner-up seven times since his previous win at the 2010 Tour Championship.

“It had been so long since I’d won. Had I not won at Hilton Head, we’d be talking about how many leads I took into Sunday and didn’t work out and how long it’s been since I’ve won and why haven’t I? It helps any time you get over the hump and go ahead and win.

“Hopefully I’ll play well tomorrow and get myself in position for Sunday. If I do, I’ll look back on that round and what I did right and try to do those things again.”

Furyk, a 17-time champion on the PGA Tour, has squandered two previous opportunities to win on the heavily tree-lined layout at Firestone.

In 2001, he lost a marathon playoff on the seventh extra hole to Tiger Woods. In 2012, he double-bogeyed the final hole to be edged out by fellow American Keegan Bradley after leading the tournament from the opening round.

“I’ve lost some tournaments in some pretty poor fashions, but I don’t think I’ve let one ever slip nearly as bad as this one,” Furyk said after his late collapse in 2012. “This was my worst effort to finish off an event.”

Three years on, he still feels the sting of disappointment.

“I’m disappointed I’ve never won here,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite courses we play. Before I’d won at Hilton Head [for the first time] in 2010, that was another course where I’d always wanted to win.

“So I’m disappointed [never to have won at Firestone], but to have like a chip on my shoulder. No. I don’t look at it like that. It’s another year and opportunity, and we’re only halfway.”

Reuters

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Jakarta. General Motors Indonesia has appointed a new president director to make the company profitable again after it closed its assembly plant outside Jakarta and continues to lose ground to Japanese rivals.

“Our aim right now is to stabilize the company in Indonesia,” Gaurav Gupta, the new president director of GM Indonesia, said recently.

“We want to make sure we are able to take care our customers, improve our dealer network and make sure we could engage our consumers on a regular basis.”

Gupta previously served as managing director of GM Vietnam before being appointed to head the Indonesia office in July. The previous GM Indonesia chief, Michael Dunne, resigned in February, and chief financial officer Pranav Bhatt served as interim president director until Gupta was named.

Gupta has worked for GM since 1997, from retail network operations regional manager for GM Asia Pacific, based in Singapore, to strategic business and utility vehicles director for GM India.

In his latest posting, he faces a stern test getting the company’s finances in order in a market where GM has long lagged behind Japanese automakers such as Toyota, Daihatsu and Honda.

GM Indonesia reported losses of $200 million from 2013 to 2014 due to a poor sales and high operating costs, and closed down its assembly plant in Bekasi, on the eastern outskirts of Jakarta, in June this year – just over two years after opening it to great fanfare to produce its Chevrolet Spin MPV.

The Spin was meant to compete against the best-selling models in the country, such as the Toyota Innova and Honda Mobilio, but failed to break the chokehold that the Japanese carmakers had on the market.

‘Worrisome’ market

Gupta acknowledges that he comes into the market at a shaky time for the domestic car industry.

Sales in the first half of 2015 amounted to just over 525,000 units, down 18 percent from the same period last year, according to the manufacturers’ association, or Gaikindo. The association has cut its full-year sales target to 1.1 million this year, from initial target of 1.2 million, which would mark the second straight year of declining sales.

“The current trend, which is lower than last year, is a bit worrisome for everybody, but we do understand there are investments being made and some policies being done by the government to build up the economy,” Gupta said.

“The fall in six or seven months will be difficult to recover in the next five months, but we are optimistic for the future and we will bend accordingly for the future.”

Consistent policies

GM Indonesia continues to sell the Spin as well as the Chevrolet Orlando MPV and Captiva SUV which it imports from South Korea and Thailand, respectively. Unlike some other importers, it benefits from a lower import tax under Indonesia’s free-trade agreement with Asean countries and the bloc’s major trading partners: Japan, South Korea and India.

The arrangement also shields GM Indonesia from an increase in the import tax that took effect last month. Under that new policy, all vehicles imported from outside the FTA countries are now subjected to a 50 percent tax, up from the previous 40 percent, for completely built-up cars, and 10 percent for completely knocked-down cars.

Gupta said GM Indonesia was “supportive” of the policy.

“We really hope and wish that the policies that are implemented are going to be stable and consistent. That is very important for any company or any investors from a planning perspective,” he said.

Gupta said he had devised a new marketing strategy centered around consumers’ needs. This includes setting up better training programs for front-line employees in workshops and call centers, and providing a 24-hour help desk.

“Our objective will be to make the Chevrolet business into a sustainable and profitable business by focusing on our customers and keeping them as the center of everything we’re doing,” he said.

GM Indonesia will be among the carmakers taking part in the inaugural Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show, which opens at the Indonesia Convention and Exhibition (ICE) center in the BSD township west of Jakarta.

GlobeAsia

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Kabul. More than 40 police cadets and civilians were killed and wounded in a suicide bomb attack late on Friday at a police academy in the Afghan capital, the interior ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place amid a wave of deadly bombings in Kabul that killed dozens and wounded hundreds.

The North Atlantic Trade Organization-led mission in Afghanistan said on Saturday that eight civilian contractors were killed along with one of its service members in an insurgent attack on a camp in Kabul.

The attack on Camp Integrity near the main airport was part of a wave of bombings across the Afghan capital on Friday that killed dozens of Afghan police and civilians.

The names and nationalities of the foreign military and civilian contractors killed were not released.

Reuters

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Jakarta. Indonesia is now open to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement following US President Barack Obama’s victory in a congressional battle over the pact, the country’s chief economic minister said on Friday.

The TPP would cut trade barriers and harmonize standards across 12 Pacific rim economies, including Australia and Japan, that have a combined gross domestic product of $28 trillion.

The government of Southeast Asia’s largest economy was initially opposed to joining the TPP but has had a change of heart since legislation vital to securing the deal was passed by the US Senate in June, Coordinating Minister for Economics Sofyan Djalil said.

“Many policymakers in Asia didn’t believe that President Obama will get the mandate,” Djalil told Reuters in an interview late on Friday. “TPP is now getting closer and closer to reality, and now the option is to join it or you’re left out.”

“Of course we have to look at it, we have to study it comprehensively … But in principal, we don’t have any problem.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed confidence on Friday that the pact could be completed this year even though countries involved failed to overcome feuds over auto trade, dairy goods and next-generation drugs in their latest negotiations.

Indonesia, whose exports have contracted every month since last October due to a drop in commodities, is now studying the potential impact of TPP on its foreign trade, Djalil said.

The country will also start another round of talks on a free trade agreement with the European Union next month, he added.

Indonesia’s exports plunged 12.8 percent in June, while imports tumbled 17.42 percent. The economy grew by 4.67 percent in the second quarter, its slowest pace since 2009.

Reuters

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Jakarta. Indonesia’s foreign exchange reserves shrank by $40 million last month, marking continued efforts from the central bank to prop up the persistently depreciating rupiah.

In a statement published on Friday, Bank Indonesia reported that its foreign exchange reserves stood at $107.6 billion by the end of July, from $108 billion in June.

The current figure would be enough to support the nation’s import activities for roughly seven months, but with the added burden of covering the government’s offshore loans, that time frame contracts slightly to 6.8 months, according to the statement.

Bank Indonesia executive director Tirta Segara added that the central bank was forced to tap into the reserves to pay off some offshore government debts and stabilize the rupiah, which has fallen by 8.8 percent to 13,536 per US dollar year-to-date.

“On the other side of the ledger, the increase in foreign exchange receipts from the issuance of government euro bonds was able to withstand any further decline [in the reserve],” Tirta said in a statement.

The government recently booked 1.25 billion euros ($1.36 billion) from selling euro-denominated 10-year bonds last month.

The reserves should also be resilient enough in the face of the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike slated to occur next month, said Aldian Taloputra, an economist at Mandiri Sekuritas.

He pointed out that past events, such as the Fed’s quantitative easing announcement in 2013, showed pressure typically hits the market in the days leading up to the actual event.

“I think the market has already priced in the interest rate hike… Right now, the market’s only waiting to see just how much the Fed will increase its interest rate,” he said, adding that he projected the market to calm down as soon as the decision on the Fed rate has been made.

Foreign investors currently hold 39 percent of government bonds worth Rp 538 trillion ($39.6 billion), according to the Finance Ministry’s Directorate of Budget Financing and Risk Management, a slight rise from 38 percent at the end of last year.

Foreign investors, who made up 43 percent of trade in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) so far this year, still booked Rp 2.9 trillion net buy into the country’s stocks, despite a 8.7 percent year-to-date decline in the benchmark index.

GlobeAsia

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Jakarta. Anti-corruption activists and legal experts are calling on Indonesian law enforcers to cooperate in combating a rising trend among corruption suspects of lodging police complaints or pretrial motions against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Prominent lawyer and graft suspect Otto Cornelis Kaligis on Tuesday reported the national anti-graft agency to the National Police for alleged “kidnapping” and “abuse of power” — a common strategy among corruption suspects.

Others, such as former religious affairs minister Suryadharma Ali and former Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) chief Hadi Poernomo, have attempted to undermine the KPK by filing pretrial motions against the commission.

Legal expert Todung Mulya Lubis said a police complaint is general procedure and remains in accordance to the law as part of a self-defense tactic.

“Filing a report to police is the right of every citizen, including corruptors. Yet, the question is, is the report based on strong evidence?” Todung said.

“We may not be able to stop corruptors from filing anything, yet the police have the authority to refuse reports that are not valid. The police don’t have to follow up on every complaint filed by graft suspects,” Todung said.

Legal expert Frans Winarta added that the government must put a stop to the alarming trend by instructing the country’s law enforcement agencies to support and work with one another.

“The fate of political law in Indonesia lies within the hands of President Joko Widodo. Joko must summon [the police, KPK commissioners and the attorney general] and order those institutions to collaborate in enforcing the law without having to competing against each other. They have to help each other,” Frans said on Friday.

“With many reports coming from [suspected] corruptors to the Bareskrim [the National Police's Criminal Investigation Unit], we are expecting the unit to cooperate with the KPK.”

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Ade Irawan urged the police to remain fair and neutral in investigating every report made by graft suspects without drudging up past quarrels with the anti-graft body.

“This is a challenge; accused perpetrators will always attempt to dodge blame and punishment. This is common everywhere in the world,” Ade told the Jakarta Globe on Friday. “But more importantly, the law enforcement agency receiving the report must remain objective. Is the complaint tendentious or does it bare a legal basis?”

Ade added that there is currently no need for an official policy to deal with the issue; only the willingness of law enforcers to agree to back each other in combating corruption.

Frans, who is among 48 candidates currently under assessment for the new KPK leadership, said the race includes prominent political and social figures who can potentially revive the beleaguered anti-graft agency and bring it back on track.

“But still, it all depends on the House and whether they have the save views as we do,” he said.

The KPK’s selection committee is still in the process of reviewing each candidate, said ICW’s Ade

“We hope that whoever will next lead the KPK can bring life and strength back into the agency,” he added.

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The government is embarking on a massive program to eliminate lymphatic filariasis in eastern parts of Indonesia, which will involve more than 100 million people over the next five years.

This is a great initiative that — if local authorities are on board and make sure this giant operation is seen to completion — could yield some tangible results for people in some of the nation’s least developed regions.

The program is an important move forward, but the administration of President Joko Widodo shouldn’t stop here.

The country still faces high maternal and newborn mortality rates — numbers have been steadily declining, but not fast enough. And apart from infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/Aids, we should also not lose sight of noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes, which are set to take an increasingly high toll on Indonesians if we don’t make the right lifestyle choices.

Besides better access to professional health care centers in underdeveloped regions, a key aspect of any government public health initiative should therefore be education.

Early on in his presidency, Joko rightfully made tackling substance abuse a policy priority — although one could argue about how best to go about this — but would a sustained campaign against tobacco use not make even more sense? It certainly would benefit a significant part of the population: tens of millions of (mostly) men who smoke cigarettes on a daily basis — and all those affected by secondhand smoke — as well as future generations of Indonesians who should be prevented from picking up the deadly habit.

World Health Organization data shows that as of late last year, over half of Indonesian men and more than a third of Indonesian boys aged 13-15 were smokers. Yet Indonesia is still among the ten countries that have not signed the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The government’s universal health care program is proof that the president takes citizens’ health seriously. That consideration should become the basis of a series of public health initiatives as bold as the new push to eradicate filariasis, including signing and ratifying the FCTC.

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Palermo, Sicily. Italy arrested five North African men on Friday on suspicion of multiple homicide and human trafficking in the presumed drowning of more than 200 people, saying they used clubs and knives against migrants.

Most of the dead were locked in the hold of a boat that sank off the coast of Libya on Wednesday. Police said many children were believed to be among those who perished.

Two Libyans, two Algerians and a Tunisian ranging in age from 21 to 24, were placed under formal arrest in Palermo after being questioned on Thursday. Police had earlier mistakenly identified the Tunisian as a Libyan.

Police said the accused men charged the migrants between $1,200 and $1,800 for the voyage, depending on where they would be placed on the deck of the boat. Those in the hold paid about half as much as those above, they added.

The boat was carrying some 650 people. Italian and Irish ships rescued more than 400 migrants and recovered 26 bodies, including three children. Police arrested the men after speaking to survivors during the night after they arrived in Palermo.

A police reconstruction based on witnesses’ accounts said three of the men, part of a Libyan-based human trafficking ring, alternated steering the boat while the other two kept watch over the migrants.

“The arrested are suspected of causing the confirmed deaths of 26 migrants and the presumed deaths of about 200 people who, according to witnesses, were locked in the hold of the boat that capsized,” a police statement said.

Knives, clubs and belts

Police said that about three hours into the journey from Libya the boat started taking on water in the hold, which was packed with mostly African migrants.

The traffickers ordered them to bail out the water but they were unable to do so and tried to break out of the hold. They were beaten back with knives, clubs and belts.

Migrants on the deck were ordered to sit on the hatch of the hold to prevent those below from getting out.

The traffickers marked the heads of migrants who disobeyed orders with knife cuts, particularly the sub-Saharan Africans. Arab migrants, on the other hand, were mostly beaten with belts, police said.

The migrants drowned when the boat flipped over as the Irish navy ship LE Niamh approached. The episode was the latest in a long string of recent migrant disasters in the Mediterranean.

In April, a 20-meter vessel capsized as it approached a merchant ship that had come to its assistance, and up to 900 people were killed in the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean for decades.

More than 2,000 migrants and refugees have died so far this year trying to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,279 during the whole of last year, the International Organization for Migration said.

Traffickers have sent more than 90,000 migrants by sea to Italy so far this year, the UN refugee agency says. Italy took in 170,000 in 2014.

This summer’s mass arrivals in both Italy and Greece show the crisis is worsening. Immigrants fleeing violence and poverty at home continue to pour in from Africa and the Middle East.

Many look to move swiftly to wealthier northern Europe, including to Britain from Calais in France.

Reuters

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