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ISTANBUL Turkish forces retaliated with an artillery barrage overnight and destroyed Kurdish YPG militia targets after the group's fighters opened fire on Turkey-backed forces in northern Syria, the military said on Wednesday.

It said Turkish warplanes separately struck Kurdish militants in northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing seven fighters from the PKK group which Ankara says is closely linked to the YPG.

The strikes came after Turkey's defense minister warned that Ankara would retaliate against any threatening moves by the YPG and after reports that Turkey was reinforcing its military presence in northern Syria.

The United States supports the YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, while NATO ally Turkey regards them as terrorists indistinguishable from militants from the outlawed PKK which is carrying out an insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Turkey's army said YPG machine-gun fire on Tuesday evening targeted Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army elements in the Maranaz area south of the town of Azaz in northern Syria.

"Fire support vehicles in the region were used to retaliate in kind against the harassing fire and the identified targets were destroyed/neutralised," the military statement said.

The boom of artillery fire could be heard overnight from the Turkish border town of Kilis, broadcaster Haberturk said. It was not clear whether there were casualties in the exchange of fire.

Ankara was angered by a U.S. decision in June to arm the YPG in the battle for Islamic State's Raqqa stronghold. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that nations which promised to get back weapons from the YPG once Islamic State were defeated were trying to trick Turkey.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday left open the possibility of longer-term assistance to the YPG, saying the U.S. may need to supply them weapons and equipment even after the capture of Raqqa.

Ankara considers the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The PKK has carried out an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and more than 40,000 people, most of them Kurds, have died in the fighting.

Turkish warplanes on Wednesday morning destroyed PKK shelters and gun positions during air strikes in the Avasin-Basyan area of northern Iraq, killing seven militants planning an attack on Turkish border outposts, an army statement said.

Faced with turmoil across its southern border, Turkey last year sent troops into Syria to support Free Syrian Army rebels fighting both Islamic State and Kurdish forces who control a large part of Syria's northern border region.

Erdogan has said Turkey would not flinch from taking tougher action against the YPG in Syria if Turkey believed it needed to.

(Reporting by Orhan Coskun, Tulay Karadeniz and Omer Berberoglu, Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan,; Editing by Ed Osmond and Richard Balmforth)

TOKYO An ally of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied on Thursday receiving secret political donations from an educational institution at the core of a scandal over suspected favoritism that has sliced Abe's support ratings ahead of a key local poll.

SYDNEY/VATICAN CITY Australian police charged a top adviser to Pope Francis with multiple historical sex crimes on Thursday, in a case that poses a dilemma for a pontiff who has vowed zero tolerance for such offences.

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Turkey returns fire on YPG in Syria, warplanes hit militants in Iraq - Reuters

A Libyan coast guardsman during the rescue of 147 illegal immigrants attempting to reach Europe off the coastal town of Zawiyah, west of the capital Tripoli, on Tuesday. Photograph: Taha Jawashi/AFP/Getty Images

The Italian government is considering banning ships from Libya from landing at its ports after the arrival of nearly 11,000 refugees from there in the past five days.

It has been reported that the government has given its ambassador to the EU, Maurizio Massari, a mandate to raise the issue formally with the European commission to seek permission for a drastic revision of EU asylum procedures.

One idea being discussed is denying docking privileges to ships not carrying Italian flags that seek to land in Italian ports, mainly in Sicily or Calabria.

The surge in the number of refugees reaching Italy prompted the interior minister, Marco Minniti, to fly back en route to Washington to address the crisis. An intense debate has raged in Italy about whether NGOs waiting to rescue people off Libyan coastal waters act as an incentive for people-smugglers.

The centre-right fared well in local government elections at the weekend, placing pressure on the left coalition government ahead of elections due by next year.

Both Germany and France have said Italy, after the closure of the Turkey route, has been left alone to fend with the refugee crisis for too long. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is proposing a Compact for Africa at the G20 designed to boost private sector investment in the continent, and reduce the incentive for Africans to try to migrate to Europe to escape poverty.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libyan expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations said: This is a panic measure and I would very much be surprised if it is legal. The law requires the rescue of people in distress on the high seas, and this self-blockade of Italian ports would leave migrants floating in the Mediterranean, including those in most NGO rescue ships.

It is most likely designed to force Europe to take some kind of other action. It also shows that the ideas tried so far have failed. It was first proposed that the Libyan coastguard take more action to push the boats back. It was then suggested the tribes in southern Libya act as detention guards and then it was proposed to take action in Niger. Nothing has worked.

The dramatic rise in numbers, prompted by good weather and a well-organised trafficking route also draws greater scrutiny to the plans prepared by Merkel for a long-term solution. Efforts to strengthen the Libyan coastguard by providing extra boats and training appears to have had little impact.

In the four days between 24 and 27 June, 8,863 migrants arrived, including more than 5,000 on Monday alone, according to the International Office for Migration. A further 2,000 people were reported arriving on Tuesday.

The June surge means comes after the arrival of 60,228 migrants in Italy by sea in the first five months of 2017, with 1,562 reported to have died on the central Mediterranean. The number of migrants from Libya this year is on course to exceed the 200,000 recorded last year.

There were 22,993 arrivals in May. Since the beginning of 2016, only in July and October last year were higher numbers of arrivals by sea recorded.

Nigerian is the first declared nationality of about 15 per cent of those arriving in 2017, followed by Bangladeshi (12 per cent), Guinean (10 per cent) and Ivorian (9 per cent).

Renato Brunetta of Forza Italia has pressed Minniti to block ships with migrants heading to Italy and ask the EU to allow them to be diverted to other Mediterranean ports.

Dr Merkel fears that long-term demographic trends mean 100 million Africans could be driven to Europe by climate change and poverty, and that European governments are unprepared.

Her guiding idea is to stem migration by combating poverty in Africa. Her specific initiative is to team up African nations committed to economic reforms with private investors who would then bring jobs and businesses.

Under the G20 compacts plan, an initial seven African nations would pledge reforms to attract more private sector investment. Leaders from these countries have been to Berlin to discuss the plan, meet investors and identify the practical reasons global finance shuns Africa.

Guardian service

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Italy considers closing its ports to ships from Libya - Irish Times

By

June 28, 2017, 8:39 AM EDT

Libyan oil shipments are poised to hit the highest in at least three years in the latest sign the North African country is managing to sustain a production revival.

Exports are on course to reach about 715,000 barrels a day this month, the most since July 2014, when Bloomberg began monitoring Libyan shipments, tanker-tracking data show. With relatively limited capacity to process that crude in its domestic refineries, the shipments have been moving in lock-step with production.

Libyas surging output is a key factor helping to undermine the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries efforts to reduce global supply and increase oil prices. The group met last week in Vienna to discuss how to deal with rising production in Libya and Nigeria -- both OPEC nations exempt from supply curbs -- rather than deepening output cuts by other members. U.S. production climbing to the highest since August 2015 has further derailed OPECs efforts.

Exports from Libya are recovering with Sharara, the countrys largest oil field, resuming output, as well as the fields operated by Wintershall AG. The country was pumping 902,000 barrels a day as of June 20, according to the state National Oil Corp. It would be the highest level since June 2013.

The NOC and Germany-based Wintershall agreed earlier this month to restart production in some areas, allowing for crude to flow again from the Agkhara deposit. The deal also allowed Libyas Sarah oil field to resume output, according to a person familiar with the situation. Sharara was pumping 270,000 barrels a day as of the start of last week.

So far this month, 30 cargoes comprising 25 Aframax-class tankers and five Suezmaxes have loaded from Libyan ports, totaling 20.03 million barrels, according to Bloomberg estimates. An additional five tankers are set to load in the coming days.

Italy is the most popular destination for Libyan barrels, accounting for 10 of Junes shipments. A further six headed to Spain, and two cargoes each were shipped to France, Greece, the U.K. and the U.S.

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Libyan Crude Gushes Into Tankers as Nation's Output Accelerates ... - Bloomberg

Call to all residents of Libya to reduce energy consumption The Libya Observer The General Electricity Company has pleaded with citizens, factory owners and companies to reduce their energy consumption as much as possible during the coming days. The company is doing its best to make citizens more aware in order to maintain some ...

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Call to all residents of Libya to reduce energy consumption - The Libya Observer

People from the Black Lives Matter lead the annual Pride Parade in Toronto on Sunday, July 3, 2016.

It only took 30 minutes. Thirty minutes to plunge Torontos queer community into a Queer Civil War.

Last July, Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) held up the Toronto Pride Parade for 30 minutes. BLM-TO made a number of demands of Pride Toronto in order for the parade to get moving again. Among them was a ban on police forces marching in uniform or full regalia and carrying guns at the parade. All of BLM-TO demands were agreed to and later endorsed by Prides membership and board. But since then, Torontos queer community has been in a raging civil war.

The war rages between those who believe all gay rights are now secure and those who understand that rights are parsed out according to privileged identities.

On the one side, many are white male queers, and on the other side many are Black, Indigenous and bisexual people of colour (BIPOC), including poor queers, sex workers and people with disabilities. Those in the second group are still collectively fighting for fully accorded rights to be their full queer selves; to them, the police still represent a clear and present danger.

BLM-TO has emerged as the leading activist voice on anti-Black policing in North America. As a result of their work, Pride marches across Canada and the United States are being forced to have difficult conversations about how police participation represents a fundamental political contradiction. Just this week, the New York City chapter of BLM stated their full solidarity with the Toronto chapter and called for the removal of uniformed police from the NYC Pride Parade.

The debate has been vicious: racist, transphobic and anti-sex worker. The mainstream queer community has been brutal in its insistence that police marching in the parade represents progress and change that should be welcomed by all queers.

BLM-TO and other activist groups from Boston to Washington to Winnipeg to Vancouver offer a different perspective. These activists have long worked against policing abuses and other state interventions into their lives; they refuse to concede to business as usual.

The organization understands the importance of intersectionality as the philosophical and practical foundation of its organizing. They work together with queers, trans people and sex workers, people with mental health issues, poor people and people who are marginalized in a white capitalist heteropatriarchal society. These are also the people that modern policing most often subject to its brutal mechanisms of control, arrest and incarceration.

Within these groups, there is no debate about ongoing police discrimination and brutality. These constituencies have made clear to the queer communities of which they are a part that police and policing represents a clear and present danger for them and that police participation in parades contravenes their full participation as queer community members.

It is with these issues in mind that BLM-TO engaged in the direct action of July 2016 that resulted in a ban on police marching in uniforms in the Pride parade.

I participated in the sit-down protest last July. Invited as an OG (BLM-TOs word for older Black queers), I did not know their plans for action, but I knew that I would support whatever they did. I knew I would because since 2014, BLM-TO has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that political organizing, direct action and community building could be immediately complex, queer-centred, trans-centered, sex-work positive and hold all these together without privileging one over the other.

BLM-TO began and retains an honest and complex rendering of the Black community and beyond. It began in recognizing that colonization is land theft, (near) genocide and stolen bodies from Africa simultaneously. BLM-TO began in a place that many Black and Indigenous activists had long worked for.

Last year, on the streets of Toronto as we approached the main intersection of College and Yonge, BLM-TO slowed us down so that the Indigenous drummers could come forward, form a circle and lead us into a sit-down protest. I was there for all of it.

The co-ordination between BLM-TO and the Indigenous community signalled a different relationship to contemporary politics. It signalled that Black and Indigenous activists and thinkers are seeking ways to work together that bridge white liberal divides that seek to separate us. And what more powerful way to demonstrate that bridge than to come together around policing at Pride? The power of the continuous Indigenous drumming kept us centered in the righteousness of demands within our sit-down protest.

Policing continues to have a significant impact on the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples across Canada. It would be insincere to believe that those impacted by the brutalities of policing are not Black queer and Indigenous Two-Spirit peoples, because they are. As I write, Indigenous peoples in Thunder Bay are revealing the significant stories of police brutality that shapes their lives. And the Andrew Loku inquest continues in Toronto.

The queer civil war happening now is about Black, Indigenous, trans people and sex workers insisting that what we bring to queer communities is valuable, necessary and worth protecting. That some mainstream white queers and others want to insist that police marching in uniforms represents a progressive change is a repudiation of our very lives.

Police marching in Pride parades represents both symbolically and otherwise the ongoing colonial project of violently interdicting into the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples by making us less than human.

What BLM-TO started last July and continued this June by refusing to register as a float but taking up space to march nonetheless is a powerful movement. It is a statement that says: sub-human existence will no longer be tolerated by those of us most marginalized for the price of entry into something that will not have us anyway.

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Black Lives Matter, police and Pride: Toronto activists spark a movement - The Conversation CA