The MV Louise Michel is a former French Navy boat we’ve customized to perform search and rescue. Measuring 30 meters in length and capable of up to 28 knots, she was bought with proceeds from the sale of Banksy artwork - who then decorated her with a fire extinguisher. She is operated and crewed by a team of international activist rescue professionals. Named after the French anarchist Louise Michel, she aims to combine sea rescue with the principles of queer-feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism. She runs on a flat hierarchy and a vegan diet.
It might seem incredible there is a need for a private emergency vessel in one of Europe’s busiest waterways, but there is. In response to people trying to cross the Mediterranean in search of safety, European states stopped reacting properly to distress calls from people on the move, leaving them to drift at sea and collaborating with armed forces to illegally prevent them from crossing. Europe’s Mediterranean border is the world’s deadliest.
]]>Schaeuble devoted much of his career to re-unifying his country and later served as former chancellor Angela Merkel's finance minister during the eurozone debt crisis. He died peacefully late on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) said on Wednesday.
Schaeuble was born in 1942 in the southern city of Freiburg and had been a member of parliament without interruption since 1972.
"Germany has lost a formative Christian Democrat who loved to argue and yet never lost sight of what politics is all about: making life better for citizens," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a statement.
As interior minister, Schaeuble, who represented the West, was key in drawing up the terms of Germany's reunification treaty, signed in August 1990, after the fall of the Berlin wall.
"He epitomised post-war democratic Germany like few others," said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.
The CDU praised Schaeuble's commitment to stability and responsibility in financial matters, saying "his legacy will live on in the annals of German and European history".
As finance minister, Schaeuble pulled the strings of Germany's policy response to the euro zone crisis, securing support on the right of Merkel's conservative bloc for three Greek bailouts.
That determination bordering on intransigence helped make him the most popular German politician at home and the most hated abroad, earning him the soubriquet - bestowed by news magazine Spiegel - of "chancellor behind the scenes".
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who was outspoken in his criticism of the austerity policies championed by Berlin at the height of the debt crisis, said on Wednesday that history would judge Schaeuble harshly.
"Wolfgang Schaeuble was the embodiment of the political project of buttressing a monetary union in which he himself did not believe," wrote Varoufakis on his website.
However, praise for his contributions came from across Europe, including from leaders in France, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Italy.
"Europe loses one of its staunch supporters," said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on X.
Schaeuble served as finance minister until 2017, when he took over as president of the Bundestag lower parliamentary house, showing the same focus that saw him adapt to paralysis after being shot three times at an election campaign event a few days after German reunification in 1990.
While that drive won him the respect of fellow conservatives and lawmakers from other parties, his career was not without setbacks.
For a time in the 1990s, Schaeuble was considered the anointed successor to former conservative chancellor Helmut Kohl. As head of the CDU in 1998 following Kohl's election loss, Schaeuble had named Merkel as his deputy.
However, it was a pairing that would last less than a year and a half: Merkel was instrumental in forcing him to resign the CDU leadership in 2000 after a funding scandal, with Merkel taking over and eventually serving as chancellor in 2005.
"We will miss Wolfgang Schaeuble's voice in Germany, I will personally miss his advice," said Merkel in a statement. "I mourn the loss of a politician who shaped our country in many ways."
]]>The head of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Gen. Valery Zaluzhny in a recent interview said that the war has reached a deadlock and, in order to break it, Ukraine needs more modern weaponry. Zelensky ventures to disagree with him. After this clash the rumors have appeared that Zaluzhny well-reputed in the army is about to be removed from his position which prompted the accusations of the government’s meddling in military matters.
The mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko has supported Zaluzhny and announced that the president’s approval rating declines due to the lack of preparedness to the war. The opposition leader Petro Poroshenko was not allowed to leave the country, although, he himself claims, he was going to ask for military support for Ukraine. Such political tensions have peaked at the moment when the US Congress cannot agree on military funding for Kiyv.
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