• Greece: U.N. Warns That Migrants May Overwhelm Tourist Island of Lesbos

    United Nations officials expressed deepening concern on Tuesday about record numbers of desperate refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos, a short boat ride from the Turkish coast. Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, said that roughly 600 refugees a day were arriving in the Greek islands, and that half of them were coming ashore in Lesbos, a picturesque tourist destination ill equipped to handle the flow. The Lesbos arrivals have grown steadily by the month, from 737 in January to more than 7,200 in May. Mr. Edwards said the arrivals, crammed into rubber dinghies and wooden boats, were “straining the island’s capacity, services and resources.” They are part of a broader exodus of people from the Middle East and Africa fleeing war and deprivations in their home countries for risky and sometimes deadly Mediterranean trips to Europe, which has created a crisis for the European Union. The refugee agency said there had been 103,000 refugee and migrant arrivals in Europe via the Mediterranean so far in 2015.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/world/europe/greece-un-warns-that-migrants-may-overwhelm-tourist-island-of-lesbos.html?s
    #Lesbos #Lesvos #tourisme #migration #réfugiés
    cc @reka

  • Survey Points to Challenges NATO Faces Over Russia - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/world/europe/survey-points-to-challenges-nato-faces-over-russia.html

    As NATO faces a resurgent Russian military, a substantial number of Europeans do not believe that their own countries should rush to defend an ally against attack, according to a comprehensive survey to be made public on Wednesday.

    NATO’s charter states that an attack against one member should be considered an attack against all, but the survey points to the challenges the alliance faces in trying to maintain its cohesion in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia.

    “°At least half of Germans, French and Italians say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia,°” the Pew Research Center said it found in its survey, which is based on interviews in 10 nations.
    […]
    Not all of the data in the Pew report is bad news for NATO. According to the study, residents of most NATO countries still believe that the United States would come to their defense. Americans and Canadians also largely say that their countries should act militarily to defend a NATO ally, and nearly half of the British, Polish and Spanish respondents say the same.
    […]
    But the study highlights sharp differences within the alliance’s ranks. Of all those surveyed, Poles were most alarmed by Moscow’s muscle flexing, with 70 percent saying that Russia was a major military threat.

    Germany, a critical American ally in the effort to forge a Ukraine peace settlement, was at the other end of the spectrum. Only 38 percent of Germans said that Russia was a danger to neighboring countries aside from Ukraine, and only 29 percent blamed Russia for the violence in Ukraine.

    Consequently, 58 percent of Germans do not believe that their country should use force to defend another NATO ally. Just 19 percent of Germans say NATO weapons should be sent to the Ukrainian government to help it better contend with Russian and separatist attacks.

    Support for the NATO alliance in Germany was tallied at 55 percent, down from 73 percent in 2009. Those results are influenced by Germans in the eastern part of the country, who are more than twice as likely as western Germans to have confidence in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
    […]
    The findings on Russians’ attitudes are likely to be disappointing for NATO supporters.

    Western officials have calculated that economic sanctions will eventually erode Russian support for Mr. Putin’s decision to intervene in eastern Ukraine, but he has remained extremely popular by riding a wave of nationalism and controlling much of the news media. Most Russians are unhappy with the state of the economy, but they tend to blame not Mr. Putin but the drop in oil prices and the West’s efforts to punish Russia.

    Eighty-eight percent of Russians said they had confidence in Mr. Putin to do the right thing on international affairs, the highest rating since Pew started taking polls on the question in 2003.

    @klaus : encore un coup des #Ossis ;-)