A joint task force has been established by WHO/Europe and the Central European Initiative (CEI) to respond to COVID-19 and step up regional coordination to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.
by WHO Europe
Comprising key health officials from the 17 CEI member states, the task force will serve as a strategic platform for updating member states, exchanging information, and sharing experiences, best practices and training. The goal of the task force is to encourage a coherent response and anticipate any unfavourable consequences that may stem from the pandemic while shifting towards easing of restrictions and recovery.
With the CEI Executive Secretariat providing coordination and support, and WHO/Europe contributing scientific advice to the discussions, the twice-monthly meetings will serve as a forum for CEI countries to express their needs and priorities, and establish a common understanding of internationally recommended strategies that are rooted in science and are evidence-based.
Health at the centre of recovery
During the coming weeks, the task force is set to focus on economic and socioeconomic recovery, the recovery of health systems and the safe easing of restrictions. Working groups will be set up as needed to help outline the functions and priorities of the task force, taking a closer look at thematic areas, such as COVID-19 implications for border management and tourism as summer approaches.
The importance of keeping health at the centre of socioeconomic recovery, identifying and evaluating potential risks during the transition phase, easing restrictions safely, and preventing the virus from resurging was stressed by Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, in his address to the member states during the Extraordinary Virtual Meeting of CEI Heads of Government on 15 May 2020.
Through the task force, WHO/Europe, the CEI Executive Secretariat, the countries in the region and experts in various health fields will work together to equip the member states with robust mechanisms to tackle common challenges and strengthen their COVID-19 response, with tangible results for the entire region.
Penguin Random House is the last of the Big Five American trade publishers to announce they will not attend this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair.
“As a long-time annual participant in the Frankfurt Book Fair, who believes in its enduring value and importance, Penguin Random House greatly regrets it will neither exhibit at this year’s Fair, nor attend in person, to protect the health and well-being of our employees, authors, and partners,” said the company in a statement. “Our companies will strive to support the Fair’s virtual activities this October.”
Late last month, the Frankfurt Book Fair revealed plans for a smaller event, one limited to 20,000 people at a time, with larger booths spread out over a greater area on the fairgrounds. The fair is also developing a full slate of digital events. “This will not be the same book fair as before,” said book fair director Juergen Boos. “But the changes we make and tools we implement now will help us have a better book fair in the future.”
Previously, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster all said they would not attend the fair, but did not rule out taking part in online programs.
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — As conflict, pollution and a pandemic plague the world, a new document issued by Pope Francis on Monday (June 1) – imposing transparency and efficiency measures within Vatican finances – may seem unimportant. But for observers within and outside the walled city-state, the pope’s move is a “game-changer.”
The document completely overhauls the way the Vatican invests its money. As veteran Vatican reporter John Allen put it, “nothing Pope Francis has done prior to Monday has greater potential to truly remake the Vatican’s conventional ways and means.”
In the new document, Pope Francis wrote: “In order to allow for a more efficient handling of resources, I have decided to approve a series of norms aimed at promoting transparency, control and competition in the awarding of contracts for goods and services.”
The main takeaways are the creation of a register of vetted contractors who can bid to supply goods and services to the Holy See and the Vatican. Also, the acquisitions are centralized under the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which oversees the Vatican’s real estate and financial dealings, or the Government of the Vatican City State, the executive branch at the Vatican.
In an interview published by Vatican News, Vincenzo Bonomo, dean of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, said the centralization proposed in the document aims at reducing inefficiencies and waste at a time when the world – and the Vatican – are struggling financially due to the pandemic.
“We will be able to eliminate the plague of wastes, losses, and also prevent corruption in all its forms,” Bonomo said.
Once the document is enacted at the end of the month, Vatican departments, such as the Secretariat, will have to file an explicit request for the investment to APSA and the government.
The document also excludes any contract with operators who have a conflict of interest in the deal or have ever been convicted for corruption, fraud, money laundering, financing terrorism or partaking in human trafficking.
Operators may also be excluded from entering a deal with the Vatican if they have evaded taxes in their country of origin, if represented by a trust fund (which allows for the concealment of the identity of participants) or if they reside in a tax haven. Any attempt to acquire advantages or confidential information, any attempt to provide false information, or commitments of grave violations against the environment are also cause for being excluded from providing goods and services to the Vatican and Holy See.
Pope Francis delivers his blessing from his window at the end of the Regina Coeli noon prayer on May 24, 2020, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. For the first time in months, well-spaced faithful gathered in the square for the traditional Sunday papal blessing, casting their gaze at the window where the pope normally addresses the faithful, since the square had been closed due to anti-coronavirus lockdown measures. Photo by Vatican Media
Francis’ new norms could prevent the Vatican from entering into deals like the $200 million investment into prime real estate in London that made headlines in 2019 and was described as a “scandal” and “opaque.”
In that deal, the Secretariat for the Economy acquired the services of Gianluigi Torzi, who according to leaked documents earned over $10 million in service fees. Torzi was also flagged by Roman authorities last year for “crimes of false invoicing and fraud.”
All future deals will have to be approved by a judicial committee and any real estate deal must be preceded by an evaluation by APSA or the Government of the Vatican. The president of the Vatican City State Tribunal, Giuseppe Pignatone, appointed by Pope Francis with a background of fighting mafia and corruption, explained in a commentary for Vatican News that the document charges the Vatican judiciary with the responsibility of upholding the new norms.
“This new competence is a manifestation of the trust the Holy Father places on the Vatican judges,” Pignatone wrote. “I can guarantee there will be the utmost effort on our part to deserve it.”
The office of the auditor general, the Financial Information Authority (Aif) and the Secretariat for the Economy will also be charged with identifying fraud and corruption. In the previous weeks, the Vatican announced that its accounting division, the Data Processing Center (Ced), would be placed under the supervision of the Secretariat for the Economy instead of APSA.
As with the decision to move CED under the jurisdiction of the Secretariat for the Economy, the new document applies changes that Cardinal George Pell pushed for in 2017, before he was called back to his native Australia to answer historic sex abuse charges, which he was acquitted from in April.
The document issued on Monday “was born in the Secretariat for the Economy during Cardinal George Pell’s tenure,” a source who participated in the Pell-directed reforms told Religion News Service.
“Various revised drafts of what could be the final document were produced up until Pell’s departure for Australia in the summer of 2017,” the source, who wishes to remain anonymous, said. “In fact, having understood its importance, His Eminence, Cardinal Pell, wrote to the Secretary of State, Card. Pietro Parolin, in June of 2017 to transmit a copy of the latest draft of the proposed document, stress its great importance to the Holy Father’s reforms, and to invite him to coordinate its further development, involving representatives of various other Vatican organisms and entities.”
According to the source, it was the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, the Rev. Juan Antonio Guerrero, who “provided the final support and push needed to bring the project to fruition.”
“A major milestone has been reached in the Holy Father’s reforms,” the source added.
EEAS: Kosovo: Joint statement by High Representative/ Vice-President Josep Borrell and Neighbourhood and Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi on the new government.
The European Union congratulates the new Kosovo government led by Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti and looks forward to our joint work to advance EU-Kosovo relations.
The coronavirus pandemic will remain a shared challenge for the foreseeable future and the EU will continue to stand by Kosovo and its people. We also want to see Kosovo advance on its European path. This will require determined reform efforts to strengthen the rule of law, in particular the fight against corruption and organised crime, and to promote socio-economic development.
A swift resumption of the EU-facilitated Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue, with the support of EU Special Representative Miroslav Lajčák, is essential to achieve a comprehensive normalisation of relations with Serbia. The EU-facilitated Dialogue is the only way to turn Kosovo’s European future into a reality for its citizens
The Frankfurt Book Fair has launched a new social media–based community to connect rights holders and facilitate books-to-film pitches and related intellectual property exchanges. The invitation-only platform, called Pitch Your CIP—CIP stands for “creative intellectual property”—resides on Facebook, and has 525 members so far.
“The idea grew out of pitching sessions at the ARTS+ program we have hosted at the Frankfurt Book Fair for the past several years,” said Holger Volland, v-p of the Frankfurt Book Fair, who launched the platform. The program is also an extension of Frankfurt’s sponsorship of pitching sessions at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival.
“We have had hundreds of film producers come to those sessions over the years,” said Volland, who emphasized that building relationships between the books and film sectors required a process of education on both parts. “Each has to learn to talk to each other, which is something that we as a fair always coach people on and hope to facilitate with Pitch Your CIP.”
Frankfurt had also intended to extend their pitching sessions to the Toronto International Film Festival this year, but with much of the world in quarantine, moving the sessions online was the next logical step. “When we do a pitch session at a festival, we typically limit it to 10 books pitched over a 90 minute session, but this way, with two to three pitches a week happening on the platform, we can do a hundred or more this year,” Volland said.
So far, the site has hosted pitches from agent Elisabeth Ruge, owner of Elisabeth Ruge Agentur GmbH in Berlin; Paniz Terachi from the Blue Circle Literary Agency in Tehran; and Maÿlis Vauterin, foreign rights director at Editions Stock in Paris. Pitches are done either through short recorded videos or through live interviews. In addition, the site hosted U.K. video game developer Andy Payne, who is working on a video game adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
“Our intention is to create opportunities for the most diverse group possible, including literary agents, TV streamers, filmmakers, and games developers, for any and all people from the creative communities to connect and trade licenses,” said Volland, who said his hope is for people across a spectrum of disciplines and industries, from museum curators to brand managers to influencers, to join the group, in order to facilitate creative, and even unorthodox, pitches. “For example, I”m friends with the director of the estate of Herbert von Karajan, [the Austrian conductor who led Berlin Philharmonic for three decades]. Karajan, who was a Zen Buddhist, always said he wanted to be reborn as an eagle. I think that with the assets in the estate, it could make for a very interesting pitch and, who knows, maybe even by the end, a valuable product.”
At the moment, Volland said there are no plans to monetize the platform. “It is still a work-in-progress,” he said. “We’ll adapt it to people’s needs as we hear feedback. Right now we are focused on community building and adding value to the group. Our feeling is that now is the time to make deals. Just because people are doomed to stay at home because of the coronavirus doesn’t mean the trade in intellectual property has to stop. In fact, as an industry, we cannot afford for it to stop. If we work hard, get creative, and innovate, it won’t.”
The Manacorian tennis player does not believe that we should seek “a new normal” after the coronavirus pandemic, but that this will be the one that everyone accepts
by EuropaPress
The tennis player Rafa Nadal, number two in the world, said he does not think we should seek “a new normal” after the coronavirus pandemic, but that this will be the one that everyone accepts, and regretted that those who “make decisions in politics” do so “thinking that there are new elections”.
“I have very clear opinions, but unfortunately I cannot pronounce myself on whether things are being done well, very well, badly or fatally, because the reality is that what I say in the end is taken as a political issue. We are at such a sensitive time that everything is being politicised,” he said in an interview with El País Semanal.
In this sense, he wanted to distance himself from political parties. “What do I care if Vox, the PP, Podemos, the PSOE, Ciudadanos or whoever does it well? I don’t care about Casado, Abascal, Arrimadas, Iglesias or Sánchez. Let them get us out of this and let us have the least number of deaths and the least economic impact possible,” he said.
“But there is a problem in politics, and that is that those who make decisions, unfortunately, always do so thinking that there are new elections. In an ideal world, it would be very positive if, in a situation like this, those who make the decisions were the best in each field and without any political aspirations,” he said. “A very complicated future is coming and we are going to need the experience of the best to get out of it,” he added.
In addition, the Spaniard said he does not believe in the concept of “new normality”. “I imagine the tracks and full stadiums, which is how I like to see them. You have to be patient and find the medicine, but I don’t believe in looking for a new normality. The new normal will be the one we accept. I like seeing people, hugging people, sharing with people… and we have to look for this again. We can’t just settle for forever keeping our distance,” he said.
Finally, he valued the initiative of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the WTA and the ATP to help more than 800 tennis players outside the ‘Top 100′ who have suffered more acutely from the consequences of the stop by the coronavirus. “I am part of the Players’ Council and I believe we have a responsibility to try to help the sport prevail in the best possible way,” he said.
“Different measures have been taken, and one of them is to create a fund for the 100 best players in the world to contribute an amount of money to help the rest of the players, who are having a hard time and are living difficult situations, and many ATP workers. This is a fund to help the tennis world in general, not just players. In difficult times you are forced to think about the one who is worse off than you,” he concluded.
The pizzeria Piola uses the best ingredients of quality and is directly coming from Italy. Specialty: the “cornicione” and the croutte, it is poured into the buffalo ricotta. But let you also try the suggestions that evolve during the seasons, it will impress you for sure!
Located in Place Saint-Josse, La Piola Pizza offers a variety of pizzas all tastier than the others. Recognized as part of the intangible heritage of UNESCO, the Neapolitan pizzas offered à la carte are made in respect of tradition and are cooked over a wood fire.
Since May 25th, and due to COVID19, they have reinvented themselves, and you find them at
From the big Piola family in Brussels, Piola in Casa: books, wine and pizza delivery.
Piola in Casa is a virtual shop that unites Jacopo, cofounder of Piolalibri and Beit Live, two italian cultural hubs in Brussels, Nicola, creator of the original Piola and now importer of quality wines with DeWine and finally Andrea and Carmine those magicians owners of Piola Pizza, voted one of the 50 best pizzerias in Europe.
Sitting on a rug spread on the wooden planks of his two-room house, 73-year-old Lazar Asenov skillfully twists willow branches, finishing the basket he is weaving. He learned the craft from his father and grandfather, who were nomadic weavers and horse traders. Lounging on the two beds in the room — the only furnishings — some of his many children and grandchildren watch him work. Four adults and five children share this home in a dilapidated Kremikovtsi neighborhood of muddy streets and brick shacks on the edge of the town of Garmen in Southern Bulgaria
“Simpler and happier” is how Asenov describes his childhood memories of nomadic life.
Children play between the Kremikovtsi houses in Garmen.
The Kremikovtsi neighborhood, like many others, was established by the Communist government in the 1960s. During this period, the Communist regime forcefully imposed settled way of life on the small number of nomadic Roma who had traditionally led a nomadic lifestyle.
The majority of the Bulgarian Roma had already settled, says Professor Mihail Ivanov, who in the 1990s served as an advisor to President Zhelyu Zhelev on minority issues. He estimates that about 90% of Roma lived in settlements by the late 19th century.
A nomadic group called Kalderash, (Tinsmiths or Tinkers) settled in… READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
The Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet does not have a good reputation in France and the Vatican. Since 27 February 1977, when it was forcibly occupied by people affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which it unofficially depends on, this church is the main place of worship for the traditionalist Catholic movement in Paris. Expulsion orders have been issued by courts, but they have never been implemented. The mass is said in Latin and the new modernising adaptations by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Vatican II (1962-1965) are banned. COVID-19 provided an ideal opportunity for some media outlets to discredit this controversial church by using questionable methods and arguments. It all started on Easter Sunday.
Media snowball effect and escalationSunday 12 April 2020 (Easter), AFP-La Croix/ Covid 19: a clandestine Easter mass in the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church.
Under the title of this AFP press release, which the daily paper La Croix published without any comment or verification, was the subtitle: “A clandestine Easter mass has taken place in the Saturday-Sunday night in the traditionalist Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church in Paris. Church members participated and the priest was fined for breaching the confinement regulations.” According to this release,
a few dozen people participated in a mass at this church in the 5th arrondissement (district) in Paris, which continues to celebrate the mass in Latin, despite Vatican II
on Saturday evening, local residents alerted the police after having heard music coming from the church
at midnight, members exited the church and told the police that there had been about forty people inside
police officers contacted the priest, who was fined, according to an unidentified police source
a video broadcasting on YouTube showed around thirty clerics and children serving the mass, without any masks and without respecting social distancing rules
the video broadcast on YouTube showed about 30 clerics and children serving the mass, all of them without a mask and no social distancing
the eucharist was distributed from hand to mouth to a dozen participants
there were no attendees in the church
Sunday 12 April 2020, Police station/ Twitter On that day, the Twitter account of the police station read: “this night in #Paris05, a religious service took place in a church despite the confinement measures. When the police came to control it, all doors were closed. After the mass they fined the ecclesiastical authority that led the mass.” Where and when a priest would have been fined was not mentioned in the tweet. Strange message from the police: A mass celebration may take place despite the confinement measures, but only if people do not participate and it happens behind closed doors, which was the case with the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church. In all cathedrals in France, Easter masses were celebrated by bishops behind closed doors. Moreover, it is not in the habits of the French police to crackdown on a Catholic church, a Protestant temple, a mosque or a synagogue.
Sunday 12 April 2020, Le Point/ Clandestine Easter mass
Le Point additionally declared that a 135 EUR fine had been imposed on a priest. One must wonder how any police action was possible if the doors were shut and how the police imposed a fine on a priest in a closed church. Moreover, Le Point posted a video showing a church full of people inside. However, this was an archived picture and not the alleged clandestine evening mass of 11 April. Moreover, it was not a screen shot either. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the charismatic leader of a left-wing political movement, used his interview on the prime-time RTL-TV programme « Le Grand Jury » to decry Catholics. Two days later, Christophe Castaner, the Minister of the Interior, declared on France-Inter: “I was shocked by the celebration of this mass. It is irresponsible for a priest to hold it.” Despite basing this statement on fake news, this minister was not reproached by anyone. One must wonder whether he would have reacted in the same way, without any preliminary investigation into the story, if it had been about another religious community.
Tuesday 14 April 2020, Le Progrès/ Clandestine mass, a fine imposed on traditionalists (https://bit.ly/3es37eW)
This article reported that when the police arrived, the doors of the church were shut and the participants had slipped away. Therefore no one was fined.
Tuesday 14 April 2020, Valeurs Actuelles/ Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, « fake news » and coronavirus : the media in bad faith crisis (https://bit.ly/3grxDqN)
Father Danziec, a columnist at Valeurs Actuelles, declared that:
since the beginning of the confinement, it has been posted on the church website that church members could not participate in religious services and that they would be celebrated live on YouTube
the Easter Vigil was not « clandestine », instead it was celebrated at 10.30pm in the church and aired live on YouTube (26,000 views as of 14 April).
Wednesday 15 April 2020, Le Point/ Clandestine mass in Paris: the police told to leave (https://bit.ly/2M1WzY5)
Three days later, Le Point countered with an article titled: “Clandestine mass in Paris: the police told to leave”. This gave the impression that the police had been driven out of the church, when in fact it was closed. In the article, it was said that the officers went back to the police station on their superiors’ orders, which, according to the journalist, was an incomprehensible gesture of indulgence. Without any serious evidence, the journalist continued with more accusations, which strengthened the stigmatising effect of his article:
the presence of outside participants during the religious service, which is false
statements made by alleged participants to the police officers at the exit, another lie as there were no participants for the police to speak to
the “incomprehensible” indulgence, according to the journalist, towards the attendees, as if the hierarchy of the police was lax in this situation
the police station saying to the Minister of the Interior that “the participants left the church through other exits” and had therefore eluded them, which is a non-established fact and an assumption without any evidence.
Worse still, the journalist described the video posted on the website of Le Point as « staggering » evidence of violations of the confinement rules, even though he knew that it was not the video of the Easter religious service.
Moreover, the official church’s comment reveals the name of the priest – Petrucci – and asserts that he was never fined. On Saturday evening, local residents near the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church heard some music coming from inside the place of worship and alerted the police. Police officers were sent to the church, but the doors were shut. As there was nothing amiss, they informed the police station which then ordered them to return. Inside the church, there had been an Easter vigil celebration only with the clerics, which was broadcast live on YouTube for people to watch from their homes. Prominent French media outlets did not hesitate to attack a Catholic community, without clear and undisputable evidence, because it is traditionalist and not mainstream. These are, of course, not valid reasons for accusing a church of imaginary offences. Moreover, as this community poses a challenge to the Roman Catholic Church, it is unsurprising that Catholic media did not establish the truth. These French newspapers: – re-published an AFP press release and a biased article of Le Point, without any investigation or verification- failed to contact a spokesperson from the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church to hear their version of the story- failed to interview abbot Petrucci, who is in charge of the church- used stigmatising vocabulary to describe unfounded facts such as: clandestine mass, a church full of participants, incomprehensible indulgence by the police, staggering video, etc.- circulated a fake video of the Easter vigil mass allegedly held in that church on Easter eve- ignored and disregarded screen shots posted online by the accused church community which demonstrated that the confinement measures specific to religious celebrations had been respected- never questioned the authenticity of the said screen shots. In a previous article, Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) denounced the same problematic disregard toward journalistic ethics in a case where an Evangelical community in Mulhouse (France) was scapegoated for the pandemic. (See https://hrwf.eu/france-covid-19-scapegoating-an-evangelical-church-in-mulhouse/.)
Preparations for the first ever Albanian anti-trafficking simulation-based training started at an online meeting on 29 May 2020. The OSCE Presence in Albania and the Office of the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking presented Albania’s group of experts that will design the specific training for Albania with the methodology of this flagship OSCE approach to capacity-building in this field.
The training will consist of realistic, practical and cross-dimensional simulation exercises that will enhance anti-trafficking officials’ ability to identify victims, investigate suspected trafficking cases and prosecute exploiters and perpetrators.
“Albania continues to confront numerous challenges in addressing human trafficking, in particular in regard to victims’ identification, the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators. Through this training, Albania is the first country in the region that will be able to undertake a pioneering and groundbreaking approach towards capacity-building in tackling trafficking in human beings,” said Bernd Borchardt, Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania.
Rovena Voda, Albania’s Deputy Minister of Interior and National Anti-Trafficking Co-ordinator, said that during the 2020 OSCE Chairmanship, Albania has committed that it will strengthen the fight against trafficking in human beings, a challenge felt throughout the OSCE are. “Building upon existing instruments, such as this simulation training developed by the OSCE Office of the Special Anti-Trafficking Coordinator’s Office, the Albanian Chairmanship will support the development practices to prevent and combat human trafficking,” said Voda.
The group of experts, comprising a wide range of professionals, from law enforcement agencies, the State Labour Inspectorate, the State Agency for Child Protection, Tirana University and civil society organizations, will work together over the next months to develop a training in which Albania’s anti-trafficking practitioners will work in teams to investigate simulated cases of labour and sexual exploitation among migrants, including child victims of trafficking.
“Simulation-based trainings provide a unique opportunity to participants to practice and master their skills in a safe learning environment and to receive immediate feedback from other professionals,” said Val Richey, OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings. Over the course of eight simulation-based courses held since 2016, his Office has trained 529 practitioners from over 54 participating States, seven Partners for Co-operation and six countries from Central and Western Africa.
The training is part of the OSCE Presence’s project ‘Action against Human Trafficking in Albania’, which is funded by UNICEF with the support of the United Kingdom.
