Ralph Boulton News

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Friday to press a consortium led by Luerssen Werft of Bremen for a "fair contract" for five new warships, saying the group's initial bid was too high. "My goal is to get the contract started in this legislative period, but we want a good contact, we want a fair contract and above all a realistic one," von der Leyen told reporters on Friday. Defence industry sources said last week the German government had rejected the initial bid from the consortium before it exceeded the budget target of 1.5 billion euros ($1.59 billion). The Handelsblatt newspaper reported this week that the bid came in at 2.9 billion euros, nearly twice the expected amount.

A record number of migrants have reached Italy by boat from North Africa in 2016, according to official data, as pressure on Italy's shelter and asylum systems grows. Italy has borne the brunt of new arrivals since the implementation in March of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey to curb the flow of migrants sailing for Greece. As of Nov. 28, 171,299 boat migrants had reached Italy's shores, the Interior Ministry said, compared to the previous record of 170,100 for all of 2014. There is no sign of a let-up in people crossing. Some 1,400 more migrants were rescued from rubber and wooden boats attempting to cross the central Mediterranean during Monday, Italy's coast guard said. In the past three years, Italy has recorded nearly half a million migrant arrivals.

Questions over the purchase of German submarines that started with media reports of a potential conflict of interest involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's lawyer have mounted in the last 10 days, spurring investigations in two countries. At one level the issue is straightforward: Israel wanted to replace some of its ageing submarines and maintain its military edge against potential threats like Iran, so it ordered three new submarines, costing $1.5 billion, from Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, with delivery in about a decade. The first sign of a hiccup arose when Israeli media pointed out that the intermediary on the deal, Israeli businessman Miki Ganor, had retained Netanyahu's personal lawyer, David Shimron, to act on his behalf in the transaction.

British and Russian World War Two veterans gathered on Wednesday in Arkhangelsk, 75 years to the day since Britain's first Arctic convoy of military supplies steamed into the northern port. Britain's Princess Anne has been among those attending events honouring those who sailed, and the thousands who died, protecting supply convoys dispatched to aid the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. On Aug. 31, 1941, two months after Hitler's surprise attack on his erstwhile ally prompted Josef Stalin to seek support from a beleaguered Britain, the first convoy, codenamed "Dervish", sailed into Arkhangelsk, or Archangel, after a 10-day crossing.

Calmer seas and Libya's lawlessness have opened the way for smugglers to ship thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean this week, in a striking reminder of how far Europe is from ending the migrant crisis. In just four days, Italy's coastguard and European vessels pulled 13,000 migrants from packed wooden boats and rubber dinghies crossing from Libya's coast through the Strait of Sicily, one of the shortest routes from North Africa. Images from rescue vessels showed migrants crammed into fragile boats, some in orange life jackets, others jumping into the water to swim as rescuers shouted for them to stop. Many were women and children, most of them Subsaharan Africans.

A large wooden fishing boat overcrowded with migrants capsized off the coast of Libya, the Italian navy said on Wednesday, with some 562 people rescued and five found dead. Photographs show the blue fishing boat rocking violently before capsizing, sending migrants tumbling into the sea. Some then climbed onto the hull of the overturned vessel, while others swam for life boats or toward the navy ship. Navy swimmers are also shown pulling migrants in lifebelts toward safety, according to the navy pictures. Women and children were among those rescued, but no details of the migrants' nationalities have been given. The Italian navy patrol boat Bettica saw that the vessel was in difficulty and approached it to hand out life jackets…

The European Union fears Mediterranean migrant smuggling gangs are reviving a route from Egypt, officials told Reuters, putting thousands of people to sea in recents months as they face problems in Libya and Turkey. "It's an increasing issue," an EU official said of increased activity after a quiet year among smugglers around Alexandria that has raised particular concerns in Europe about Islamist militants from Sinai using the route to reach Greece or Italy. Departures from Egypt were a tiny part of the million people who arrived in Europe by sea last year; more than 80 percent came from Turkey to Greece and most others from Libya to Italy. Detailed figures on Egypt are not available.

Italian police found more than 20 tonnes of hashish with an estimated street value of 200 million euros ($230 million) hidden in the hull of a cargo ship, a statement said on Friday. Acting on a tip, finance police -- who help oversee border security -- boarded the ship at sea and diverted it to the port of Cagliari in Sardinia, where they spent more than 18 days searching before finally finding the drugs, according to a statement. During the search, police used cranes to move enormous blocks of granite carried by the Jupiter cargo ship, which is registered in the Cook Islands. They eventually found 821 packages of hashish weighing a total of 20.5 tonnes in a ballast tank in the bow of the ship. The ship's captain and nine crew members, all Syrian, were arrested, the statement said.

It is nighttime on a beach near the resort town of Bodrum and a group of migrants look out nervously at two ships on the horizon, wondering if they can slip past the Turkish coastguard and cross the Aegean Sea into a new life in Europe. But their dinghies are poorly made and slow, and the coastguard has stepped up patrols in the area, where the body of toddler Aylan Kurdi washed up, sparking international outrage. While Europe has only woken up to the size of the refugee crisis this summer, Turkey has been the front lines for more than four years. It shares a 900-km (550 mile) border with Syria and has welcomed those fleeing the civil war, now in its fifth year.

Malaysia confirmed early on Thursday that a piece of a wing washed up on an Indian Ocean island beach last week was from Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, the first trace of the plane found since it vanished last year with 239 people on board. "Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Prime Minister Najib Razak said in an early morning televised address. "I would like to assure all those affected by this tragedy that the government of Malaysia is committed to do everything within our means to find out the truth of what happened," Najib said.

U.S. President Barack Obama and regional leaders discussed options on Monday that included sanctions and a "regional intervention force" if South Sudan's warring parties do no agree a peace deal by August 17, a U.S. official said.   Obama met with leaders from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, and the African Union to discuss the crisis.   The group agreed on the urgency of the situation in South Sudan but did not reach a consensus on what to do if a peace deal is not reached, the official said.     (Reporting by Jeff Mason; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Two smugglers arrested over the deaths of hundreds drowned in the Mediterranean's most deadly shipwreck in decades will not be charged with kidnapping because assertions that migrants had been locked below deck had proved wrong, an Italian prosecutor said on Tuesday. The two face homicide charges over the sinking of a 20-metre fishing boat last month that killed some 800 migrants. The incident also raised international alarm about attempts by thousands to flee across the Mediterranean from Libya in often ramshackle boats. Italy will undertake the expensive and difficult operation of pulling up the vessel from the sea bed where it lies at a depth of around 375 metres (1,235 feet), 135 km (85 miles) north of Libya, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Tuesday.

A French patrol ship rescued 217 migrants from three small boats that had run into trouble off the coast of Libya on Saturday, the maritime police said in a statement. The Commandant Birot helped several dozen people in distress and intercepted two suspected people smugglers, according to the statement. "The intercepted vessels have all been neutralised," the maritime police said, adding that they were responding to a call from the maritime rescue coordination centre in Rome as part of the European Union's operation Triton. The rescued migrants and the suspected people smugglers have been handed over to the Italian authorities, the Toulon, France-based maritime police added.

Two Albanian seamen were killed on Tuesday during the salvage of a multi-deck car ferry that caught fire off Greece's Adriatic Coast two days ago, killing at least 11 people, with dozens more missing. The men were killed when a cable connecting their tugboat to the smouldering hulk of the Norman Atlantic snapped and hit them, an Albanian port authority official and Italy's navy said. As salvage operations continued, there was confusion over the numbers on the ship, with dozens…

Russia will take counter measures if Washington imposes new sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Saturday. The U.S. Congress has readied new sanctions on Russian weapons companies and investors in the country's high-tech oil projects, but U.S. President Barack Obama has yet to sign a corresponding bill into law. "We will not be able to leave that without an answer," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying. He did not say what form of counter-measure Moscow might take. Relations between Russia and the United States are at their lowest since the Cold War because of Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March and its support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Russia's rouble and shares hit new lows on Friday as oil prices collapsed after OPEC decided to leave its output unchanged despite heavy oversupply. At 1000 GMT, the rouble was around 2.2 percent below the previous close at 49.72 roubles per dollar, and 1.7 percent weaker against the euro at 61.94 roubles . It earlier hit an all-time low of 49.90 to the dollar. Traders said market moves were exacerbated by thin volumes, which mean that even small purchases of foreign currency were able to move the market. Brent crude was last trading at around $72 a barrel after falling as much as $6.50 a barrel a day earlier, when the OPEC oil producer group made known its decision not to cut its output targets.

Rebels pressed ahead with a referendum on self-rule in east Ukraine on Sunday and fighting flared anew in a conflict that has raised fears of civil war and pitched Russia and the West into their worst crisis since the Cold War. Clashes broke out around a television tower on the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Slaviansk shortly before voters made their way to polling stations through streets blocked by barricades of felled trees, tyres and rusty machinery. "I wanted to come as early as I could," said Zhenya Denyesh, a 20-year-old student voting at a three-storey concrete university building. In nearby Mariupol, scene of fierce fighting last week, officials said there were only eight polling centres for half a million people.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Tuesday Europe must take responsibility for rescuing boat migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Africa by making a "significant investment" in the region's border control agency, Frontex. "A Europe that tells the Calabrian fisherman that he must use a certain technique to catch tuna but then turns its back when there are dead bodies in the sea cannot call itself civilized," Renzi said in parliament. Italy's navy and coast guard have been patrolling the waters between Africa and the Italian island of Sicily since October…

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday he would take steps "within hours" to end blockades of ports in Marseille and Corsica by workers of the SNCM ferry operator, who are striking over the firm's restructuring plans. Workers at the loss-making company partially owned by Veolia have been on strike since June 24, occupying ferries and blockading access to part of Marseille's port for 16 days over fears they will lose jobs and job privileges. The strike has left the island in part cut off from the mainland at the peak of the tourist season vital to Corsica's economy while holding up the flow of goods. Valls, who has warned repeatedly that the strike could condemn the SNCM "to death"…

Salvage going to plan, hulk due to depart July 21. Engineers were securing the final chains to the Costa Concordia on Tuesday, preparing the wrecked luxury liner to be towed away from the Italian island where it sank two and half years ago, killing 32 people. The 114,500 tonne Concordia ran aground off Giglio island in January 2012 and has been stranded there ever since as engineers set up one of the biggest maritime salvage operations in history. Now the rusting hulk of the once-gleaming white ship, more than twice the size of the Titanic, is on course to leave the Tuscan coast on July 21, engineers said at a press conference. "Work has proceeded all night, still 4 chains to be connected," the wreck removal project organisers said on their official Twitter feed at around midday.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it would launch an EU version of Italy's sea rescue operation to help it deal with the droves of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in crowded boats from North Africa, something Italy has repeatedly called for. Europe's border control agency Frontex will take over the new operation, dubbed "Frontex Plus", by merging two existing ones and eventually it will replace Italy's costly mission to patrol the seas for boat migrants. "The aim is to put in place an enlarged Frontex Plus to complement what Italy has been doing," said Cecilia Malmstrom, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, on Wednesday. The civil war in Syria and breakdown of order in Libya have pushed the number of sea-borne arrivals in Italy to a record of more than 100…

More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last week, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday. In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta's coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of nine survivors. The survivors said the traffickers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean. The migrants refused, leading to a confrontation that ended when traffickers rammed the ship carrying the migrants, causing it to sink, IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters in Geneva.