Author: ANews

Estonia’s Kallas, fierce Russia critic and new EU foreign policy chief

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VILNIUS (Reuters) – Kaja Kallas, who resigned as Estonia’s prime minister on Monday to become the European Union’s next foreign policy chief, is known for her tough stance on Russia, which may raise doubts as to whether she can represent views from across the bloc.

Kallas, 47, has made her name as a critic of neighbouring Russia and what she says are its expansionist aims since she became Estonian prime minister in early 2021.

An uncompromising voice in the EU and NATO for unconditional support to Kyiv and for containing Moscow, she led her country of 1.4 million people to become among the highest per-capita military donors to Ukraine.

Kallas has been wanted in Russia since February for her role in removing Soviet-era monuments in her country.

Born in Tallinn, she is the great-granddaughter of the first Estonian chief of police as the newly independent country emerged from the Russian Empire after World War One only to be absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940.

Kallas’ mother was only six-months-old when her family was forcibly relocated to Siberia in 1949 along with 20,000 other Estonians.

“Russia hasn’t changed,” she said last year on marking an anniversary of her mother’s exile. “This evil lives on in Russia.”

Unassuming and open, Kallas is well regarded abroad, though not all of the bloc’s countries share her dogged defiance of Russia. Above all, Hungary’s Viktor Orban has maintained friendly ties with Moscow even after its invasion of Ukraine.

However, her popularity at home suffered when local media revealed last year that her husband was involved in a business which continued its operations in Russia even as Kallas publicly criticised all who did so.

Her government also raised taxes shortly after the 2023 elections and legalised same-sex marriage, which almost half of the country opposes.

ESTONIAN DYNASTY

Kallas is a second-generation politician.

Her father was the governor of the newly independent Estonian central bank and established the liberal Reform Party in 1994, which he led for a decade. He also served as Estonia’s prime minister and later as vice president of the European Commission led by Jose Manuel Barroso.

In 2011, Kaja Kallas left a career as a partner at a Tallinn law firm to run, successfully, for the Estonian and then European parliaments on a Reform Party ticket. After leading the Reform Party from 2018 she became Estonia’s first female prime minister in 2021.

Kallas, known for her uncompromising drive in pushing through policies, has been accused of arrogance by some of her detractors.

Kallas has no doubt her small country’s security depends on its membership of NATO and the European Union.

“If Europe is united and strong, Estonia will also be strong,” she told the Estonian parliament in 2022.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; editing by Niklas Pollard, Tomasz Janowski and Angus MacSwan)

Estonia’s Kallas, fierce Russia critic and new EU foreign policy chief

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Kaja Kallas, who resigned as Estonia’s prime minister on Monday to become the European Union’s next foreign policy chief, is known for her tough stance on Russia, which may raise doubts as to whether she can represent views from across the bloc.

Kallas, 47, has made her name as a critic of neighbouring Russia and what she says are its expansionist aims since she became Estonian prime minister in early 2021.

An uncompromising voice in the EU and NATO for unconditional support to Kyiv and for containing Moscow, she led her country of 1.4 million people to become among the highest per-capita military donors to Ukraine.

Kallas has been wanted in Russia since February for her role in removing Soviet-era monuments in her country.

Born in Tallinn, she is the great-granddaughter of the first Estonian chief of police as the newly independent country emerged from the Russian Empire after World War One only to be absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940.

Kallas’ mother was only six-months-old when her family was forcibly relocated to Siberia in 1949 along with 20,000 other Estonians.

“Russia hasn’t changed,” she said last year on marking an anniversary of her mother’s exile. “This evil lives on in Russia.”

Unassuming and open, Kallas is well regarded abroad, though not all of the bloc’s countries share her dogged defiance of Russia. Above all, Hungary’s Viktor Orban has maintained friendly ties with Moscow even after its invasion of Ukraine.

However, her popularity at home suffered when local media revealed last year that her husband was involved in a business which continued its operations in Russia even as Kallas publicly criticised all who did so.

Her government also raised taxes shortly after the 2023 elections and legalised same-sex marriage, which almost half of the country opposes.

ESTONIAN DYNASTY

Kallas is a second-generation politician.

Her father was the governor of the newly independent Estonian central bank and established the liberal Reform Party in 1994, which he led for a decade. He also served as Estonia’s prime minister and later as vice president of the European Commission led by Jose Manuel Barroso.

In 2011, Kaja Kallas left a career as a partner at a Tallinn law firm to run, successfully, for the Estonian and then European parliaments on a Reform Party ticket. After leading the Reform Party from 2018 she became Estonia’s first female prime minister in 2021.

Kallas, known for her uncompromising drive in pushing through policies, has been accused of arrogance by some of her detractors.

Kallas has no doubt her small country’s security depends on its membership of NATO and the European Union.

“If Europe is united and strong, Estonia will also be strong,” she told the Estonian parliament in 2022.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; editing by Niklas Pollard, Tomasz Janowski and Angus MacSwan)

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The US held off sanctioning this Israeli army unit despite evidence of abuses. Now its forces are shaping the fight in Gaza

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Among CNN’s findings was rare whistleblower testimony from a former soldier of the unit who described a command that encouraged a culture of violence, an issue identified by US State Department investigations.

In April, the State Department said that it had determined five Israeli security units had committed gross violations of human rights prior to the outbreak of the war with Hamas in Gaza. The department said that four of the units had “effectively remediated,” or reformed themselves, in the wake of those violations, but that it was still deciding whether to restrict US military assistance to the remaining unit: The Netzah Yehuda battalion, originally created to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews in the military.

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The race is on to save a 150-year-old NY lighthouse from crumbling into the Hudson River

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Wooden pilings beneath Hudson-Athens Lighthouse are deteriorating, and the structure, built in the middle of the river when steamboats still plied the water, is beginning to shift. Cracks are apparent on the brick building and its granite foundation.

While there are other endangered lighthouses around the nation, the peril to this one 100 miles 161 (kilometers) north of New York City is so dire the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Hudson-Athens on its 2024 list of the country’s 11 most endangered historic places. Advocates say that if action isn’t taken soon, yet another historic lighthouse could potentially be lost in the coming years.

“All four corners will begin to come down, and then you’ll have a pile of rock in the middle. And ultimately it will topple into the river,” Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said during a recent visit.

The society is trying to quickly raise money to place a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, an ambitious preservation project that could cost up to $10 million. Their goal is to save a prominent symbol of the river’s centuries-long history as a busy waterway. While the Hudson River was once home to more than a dozen lighthouses, only seven still stand.

Elsewhere, there’s a similar story of lost history.

Across the United States, there were around 1,500 lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century. Only about 800 of them remain, said U.S. Lighthouse Society executive director Jeff Gales. He said many of the structures deteriorated after they were automated, a process that became more common by the 1940s.

“Lighthouses were built to have human beings taking care of them,” Gales said. “And when you seal them up and take the human factor out, that’s when they really start falling into disrepair.”

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse began operating in 1874 offshore from the city of Hudson, and was eventually co-named for the village of Athens on the other side of the river. It was built to help keep boats from running aground on nearby mud flats, which were submerged at high tide.

“There were shipwrecks because they couldn’t see the sandbar. And so that’s why this lighthouse was put in the middle of the river, unlike most that are on the shoreline,” said preservation society president Kristin Gamble.

The lighthouse is still in use, though now with an automated LED beacon. The preservation society owns the building and maintains it as a museum.

The last full-time keeper, Emil Brunner, retired in 1949 when the lighthouse became automated. He lived there with his family for much of his tenure. One of his daughters recalled rowing to school and, in the winter, walking across the ice on a safe path marked by her father’s tobacco juice stains on the frozen surface. Brunner also is portrayed on a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover painting rowing with a child, Christmas presents and a tree in tow, as his wife and other children await their arrival on the lighthouse landing.

Visitors who are ferried to the lighthouse today can explore the keeper’s quarters, which are modest but feature river views from every window. And they can climb up the tight spiral staircase to the tower to take in a unique panorama view of the river and the Catskill Mountains to the west.

Roof work on the lighthouse is underway this summer, but repairs to the building will ultimately mean little unless workers address damage to some of the 200 wood pilings packed in mud that hold the lighthouse above water. The support structure has weathered 150 years of currents and ice. But large commercial ships of the modern era — with their big propellors — introduce new problems.

“They create a turbulence that’s like being inside a washing machine. And that turbulence actually comes underneath and pulls — churns up — the soil underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said. “In fact, there are boulders as big as your car that are 100 feet out in that river that used to be right next to us.”

The underwater agitation washes away mud around the pilings, leaving them exposed to water. And that accelerates decay of the wood. Engineers estimate the structure could begin to tilt in three to five years, which Gamble said would be “the beginning of the end.”

The proposed ring of corrugated steel would shield the structure from that turbulence. The 100-foot (31-meter) diameter circle, which would project above the water line, would be filled in and covered by a deck, enlarging the area around the lighthouse.

The preservation group is optimistic about getting federal money to help pay for the project. Both of New York’s U.S. senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, support the effort, as does local Republican congressional representative, Marc Molinaro.

Though the project is pricey, Gamble said it would not only save the lighthouse from being lost to time, but would protect the 19th century beacon for generations to come.

“We need, basically, the 100-year fix,” she said.

The race is on to save a 150-year-old NY lighthouse from crumbling into the Hudson River

Wooden pilings beneath Hudson-Athens Lighthouse are deteriorating, and the structure, built in the middle of the river when steamboats still plied the water, is beginning to shift. Cracks are apparent on the brick building and its granite foundation.

While there are other endangered lighthouses around the nation, the peril to this one 100 miles 161 (kilometers) north of New York City is so dire the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Hudson-Athens on its 2024 list of the country’s 11 most endangered historic places. Advocates say that if action isn’t taken soon, yet another historic lighthouse could potentially be lost in the coming years.

“All four corners will begin to come down, and then you’ll have a pile of rock in the middle. And ultimately it will topple into the river,” Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said during a recent visit.

The society is trying to quickly raise money to place a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, an ambitious preservation project that could cost up to $10 million. Their goal is to save a prominent symbol of the river’s centuries-long history as a busy waterway. While the Hudson River was once home to more than a dozen lighthouses, only seven still stand.

Elsewhere, there’s a similar story of lost history.

Across the United States, there were around 1,500 lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century. Only about 800 of them remain, said U.S. Lighthouse Society executive director Jeff Gales. He said many of the structures deteriorated after they were automated, a process that became more common by the 1940s.

“Lighthouses were built to have human beings taking care of them,” Gales said. “And when you seal them up and take the human factor out, that’s when they really start falling into disrepair.”

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse began operating in 1874 offshore from the city of Hudson, and was eventually co-named for the village of Athens on the other side of the river. It was built to help keep boats from running aground on nearby mud flats, which were submerged at high tide.

“There were shipwrecks because they couldn’t see the sandbar. And so that’s why this lighthouse was put in the middle of the river, unlike most that are on the shoreline,” said preservation society president Kristin Gamble.

The lighthouse is still in use, though now with an automated LED beacon. The preservation society owns the building and maintains it as a museum.

The last full-time keeper, Emil Brunner, retired in 1949 when the lighthouse became automated. He lived there with his family for much of his tenure. One of his daughters recalled rowing to school and, in the winter, walking across the ice on a safe path marked by her father’s tobacco juice stains on the frozen surface. Brunner also is portrayed on a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover painting rowing with a child, Christmas presents and a tree in tow, as his wife and other children await their arrival on the lighthouse landing.

Visitors who are ferried to the lighthouse today can explore the keeper’s quarters, which are modest but feature river views from every window. And they can climb up the tight spiral staircase to the tower to take in a unique panorama view of the river and the Catskill Mountains to the west.

Roof work on the lighthouse is underway this summer, but repairs to the building will ultimately mean little unless workers address damage to some of the 200 wood pilings packed in mud that hold the lighthouse above water. The support structure has weathered 150 years of currents and ice. But large commercial ships of the modern era — with their big propellors — introduce new problems.

“They create a turbulence that’s like being inside a washing machine. And that turbulence actually comes underneath and pulls — churns up — the soil underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said. “In fact, there are boulders as big as your car that are 100 feet out in that river that used to be right next to us.”

The underwater agitation washes away mud around the pilings, leaving them exposed to water. And that accelerates decay of the wood. Engineers estimate the structure could begin to tilt in three to five years, which Gamble said would be “the beginning of the end.”

The proposed ring of corrugated steel would shield the structure from that turbulence. The 100-foot (31-meter) diameter circle, which would project above the water line, would be filled in and covered by a deck, enlarging the area around the lighthouse.

The preservation group is optimistic about getting federal money to help pay for the project. Both of New York’s U.S. senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, support the effort, as does local Republican congressional representative, Marc Molinaro.

Though the project is pricey, Gamble said it would not only save the lighthouse from being lost to time, but would protect the 19th century beacon for generations to come.

“We need, basically, the 100-year fix,” she said.

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