Many people on Guam, and in other US territories, consider themselves second-class citizens. 

They can’t vote for the president and the one representative each territory is given in Congress also has no voting power, even though most people living in the territories are US citizens, with many also serving in the US military. 

“Most members of Congress, they couldn’t find Guam on a map and they don’t want to because it’s completely off their radar,” Anne Perez Hattori, a Chamorro History Professor at the University of Guam, tells AJ+. 

The indigenous Chamorro people in Guam, located in the Western Pacific, have had their traditional practices stripped away from them over the hundreds of years that they’ve been colonised by the Spanish, occupied by the Japanese and militarised by the Americans.

In this series of Untold America, AJ+ travels more than 9,000km (about 5,592 miles) from California to Guam to examine the island’s traumatic past, and what it really means to be from a US territory.

How the US territory of Guam became a US territory

In Part 1, AJ+ looks into Guam’s history, speaking to Hattori, who explains that due to a 1901 US Supreme Court decision, people living in the US territories don’t have full constitutional rights, even if they are US citizens.

“We’re reliant upon US Congress to determine our rights, and US Congress, it’s this huge body. We don’t have a vote there, so we don’t have bargaining power,” Hattori says.

AJ+ also speaks to survivors of Japanese occupation.

The Chamorro people suffered many abuses under Japanese control. Jesusa “Susie” Arcero was only 11 years old when the Japanese took over Guam in 1941. She explains how she and many other women were assaulted by Japanese soldiers during the three years they controlled the island.

When the US returned to the island at the end of World War II, Susie says many were relieved, resulting in a generation of patriotism towards the US.

But according to the Chamorro people, they’ve also suffered at the hands of the Americans. Antonio Artero Sablan, a Chamorro landowner, says he was repeatedly held at gunpoint by the US military when he would try to enter his family’s land, which was seized by the military to become part of the Andersen Air Force Base. He was eventually given access to the land after staging a series of protests.

Should US territories be independent?

In Part 2, AJ+ speaks to Rodney Cruz, who joined the military when he was 18 years old.

He served two tours in Iraq and suffers from depression.

“Not being able to vote for president is, it’s like a piece of me is missing,” Cruz says, describing what it’s like to not have a say in who the president will be, especially after witnessing death on the battlefield, picking up “the body parts of American soldiers and being diagnosed with PTSD”.

In this episode, AJ+ also meets Chamorro activists who are fed up and consider Guam to be a US colony.

Why is SPAM so popular in Guam?

In Part 3, AJ+ examines the impact of Guam’s dependency on imported and processed foods like the canned cooked meat, SPAM.

The rate of diabetes on Guam is twice as high as the rest of the US, and in 2014, half of the deaths on the island were due to heart disease and cancer.

AJ+ speaks to Franceska De Oro and Hila’an San Nicolas, who are both Chamorro, and are speaking out about the health effects of processed foods on social media and are attempting to live a locally sustainable lifestyle.

What does it mean to be indigenous and from a US territory?

Finally, in Part 4, AJ+ asks people on Guam about the unique experience of being indigenous Chamorro and from a US territory.

It’s France versus England in the Challenge Cup final as Catalans Dragons take on Warrington Wolves at Wembley Stadium, and former France, Tottenham and Newcastle winger David Ginola can’t wait.

WATCH MORE: Warrington and Catalans attempt Alli’s celebration

Watch live coverage of the 2018 Challenge Cup final between Catalans Dragons and Warrington Wolves on Saturday, 25 August from 14:00 BST on BBC One and the BBC Sport website.

Available to UK users only.

SAN FRANCISCO — They were the kind of social media posts that regularly get shared in liberal circles, but they were coming from sham accounts originating in Iran, the most recently uncovered attempt by a foreign adversary to sway U.S. voters. 

One meme on Facebook from a page called the Progressive Front showed former First Lady Michelle Obama holding a doctored sign that read “An Immigrant Took My Job,” a swipe at Slovenia-born Melania Trump. A tweet from the account Liberty Front Press urged people to watch a video of a parent and child reunited after being separated at the border “and be reminded of why we fight every day against the monstrous and evil policies of the Trump regime.” YouTube channels featured videos like “Everything You Need to Know about Impeachment.”

The fake pages, tweets and videos were all part of a covert disinformation campaign by Iran that operated in the U.S. and other countries, major U.S. tech companies say. Facebook, Google and Twitter disclosed this week they were shuttering hundreds of accounts and channels linked to the campaign.

The revelation, the biggest of its kind since Facebook disclosed the extent of Russian manipulation on the social network during the 2016 presidential election, highlighted the growing scale and frequency of disinformation operations threatening the United States, experts on these shadowy networks say.

Iran has denied any involvement. 

“Everyone has seen that you can manipulate Americans using false personas online,” said Ben Nimmo with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been working with Facebook on election integrity. “All you need is an internet connection and the ability to speak English.”  

This is the first time Iran was nabbed conducting an influence campaign on social media in the U.S., experts on disinformation say. And it used tactics similar to Russian operatives during and after the 2016 presidential election.

People with ties to Iranian state media set up social media accounts with fake names to target progressive groups, such as Bernie Sanders supporters in the U.S. or Scottish separatists in the U.K., a USA TODAY review of the social media posts showed. They then tapped into resentment on such heated topics as the conflict between Israel and Palestine, immigration and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, pushing pro-Iranian messages alongside anti-Trump messages or posts backing Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party.

In Europe, more than 20,000 Facebook users followed a page “Free Scotland 2014” supporting Scottish secession that turned out to be a fake page from Iran. One Facebook post from “The British Left” spoofed the film “The Notebook” as The Nukebook, showing Kim Jung-un and Donald Trump staring into each other’s eyes in the rain. It was also a fake.

Social media posts linked to articles posted on Iranian-run websites that were made to look like media outlets or nongovernmental organizations.

The objective: to hijack the political conversation to promote anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi and pro-Palestinian themes and Tehran’s interests around the globe, including U.S. policies favorable to Iran such as a nuclear deal, which Trump scrapped in May, that had lifted sanctions.

“Such claims are ridiculous and are part and parcel of U.S. public calls for regime change in Iran, and are an abuse of social media platforms,” Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, told Reuters this week.

About 155,000 Facebook users followed at least one of the accounts affiliated with Liberty Front Press, according to Facebook. But a review of posts and videos affiliated with the Iranian accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit suggest the influence operation did not gain much traction in the U.S., with many posts garnering few likes.

Security company FireEye, which reported suspicious accounts operated under the name Liberty Front Press to Facebook, Google and Twitter two months ago, says Iran’s tactics appeared to have been far more focused on advancing its own foreign policy interests than on influencing U.S. elections. But, if left in place, it’s possible the fake accounts and pages could have been used that way, says Lee Foster, manager of FireEye’s information operations analysis team.

The attacks on social media point to just how vulnerable the American public is, particularly during election cycles, security researchers say.

“This is the kind of thing that I would expect most state intelligence services with advanced information warfare and propaganda capabilities to conduct and this is just the latest one we have uncovered,” said Jonathon Morgan, CEO of New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company that studies disinformation.

Russia has already tried it, with some success. Facebook was a major target of a Russian disinformation campaign during and after the U.S. presidential election, with hundreds of pages and accounts that were later discovered to have been created by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency. The organization bought thousands of ads targeting Americans, often with rubles, and created posts with divisive messages that reached 146 million Americans on Facebook and Instagram.

Last month, the social media giant took down 32 pages and accounts that reached 290,000 people. The accounts were critical of President Trump, a departure from 2016, when Russian messaging sought to bolster his candidacy and undercut his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

For Iran, the veiled social media campaign marked a shift in strategy — and an escalation, says Morgan. In the past, it’s used cyber attacks on U.S. government agencies, universities and private companies to promote its interests, efforts that increased as international sanctions took their toll. On social media, it spread propaganda through state-run media or on official social media accounts and largely targeted U.S. policy in the Middle East, disinformation experts say.

This new effort was joined by a common thread: people posed as members of opposition groups who are active online to try to harness their passion and energy in support of Iranian foreign policy. One fake Iranian activist page, Patriotic Palestine Front, pushed memes of Israeli aggression.

Facebook did not disclose how many times the posts were shared or liked.

Dozens of posts also appeared on Reddit with links to articles from the Liberty Front Press website and pop up in subreddits such as r/esist and r/SandersForPresident.

‘A sitting duck’

Disinformation experts say to expect many more such efforts, particularly without a decisive response from the U.S.

Though slow to recognize this new kind of threat, Facebook has been trying to  shut down Moscow’s influence operations and scrub Kremlin-sponsored campaigns from the giant social network ahead of the midterms.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted this week that more revelations of nation-state disinformation campaigns may come to light in coming weeks and months. “I think it’s safe to say we have a number of investigations going on, and we’ll update you when we know more,” he said.

A 2018 report from the Oxford Internet Institute found disinformation campaigns on social media in 48 countries, up from 28 in 2017, despite efforts to combat the spread of false information.

Facebook’s former security chief, Alex Stamos, warned this week that the U.S. government’s failure to address these threats has left the United States unprepared and vulnerable for the midterms in November.

The covert information operations show that “America’s adversaries believe that it is still both safe and effective to attack U.S. democracy using American technologies and the freedoms we cherish,” Stamos wrote in an article published on Lawfare, a national security blog affiliated with the Brookings Institution.

The White House has insisted it has responded forcefully to election interference, but as the midterm elections loom, private companies have become the first line of defense against foreign adversaries and other bad actors, disinformation experts say. 

This week Microsoft said it foiled Russian hacking attempts on politicians and think tanks. Companies such as Facebook and Twitter met Friday in San Francisco to collaborate on how to combat disinformation campaigns. 

“Fortunately the platforms have now woken up to this,” Nimmo said. “But on the political level, the argument just hasn’t caught up yet for all kinds of domestic reasons. Until you have the political leadership, you are not going to get concerted action. So America is in a really bad place at the moment.

“America,” he said, “is now seen as a sitting duck for this kind of operation.”  

More: Facebook foils political influence campaigns originating in Iran, Russia ahead of U.S. midterms

More: Google, YouTube targeted by Iran influence operation, shut down dozens of accounts

More: We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Here’s what we found

More: Russian Facebook ads inflamed Hispanic tensions over immigration after Trump election

 

 

 

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Remember the Jaguar E-Type, the classic sports car from the 1960s and ’70s? It’s back with a bit of extra juice.

The vehicle that’s been called “the most beautiful car ever made” was shown as an electric concept car last year. This week the British carmaker announced it’s going to make and sell the all-electric version. It will be available starting in summer 2020.

The new E-Type promises to look and feel like the old-school classic, but it’ll have quicker acceleration with its battery-powered engine. It will also have a 170-mile range on its 40-kilowatt-hour rechargeable battery. 

For those who already have the traditional E-Type, an electric conversion will be available, and it’s fully reversible if you want to go back to the authentic vehicle.

The price and full specs haven’t been announced yet, but the classic version is available for anywhere from $70,000 to more than $100,000 on Autotrader. There’s one really beat-up E-Type from more than 50 years ago going for $35,000.

The electrified E-Type isn’t Jaguar’s first foray into battery-powered energy. Its I-Pace is an electric SUV (similar to Tesla’s Model X) and is roaming the streets of Phoenix as part of a partnership with autonomous car company Waymo.  

The United States, a major ally of Israel, has cut more than $200m in economic aid to Palestinians, in a move that comes months after also drastically cutting its contribution to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

A senior US official said on Friday that President Donald Trump had ordered the State Department to “redirect” the funding for programmes in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip to unspecified “high-priority projects elsewhere”. 

The official added that the decision took into account “the challenges the international community faces in providing assistance in Gaza, where Hamas control endangers the lives of Gaza’s citizens and degrades an already dire humanitarian and economic situation”.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) quickly denounced the US move, calling it “the use of cheap blackmail as a political tool. The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion.”

“The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale,” PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement.

“There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The US administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in its collusion with the Israeli occupation and its theft of land and resources; now it is exercising economic meanness by punishing the Palestinian victims of this occupation.”

The decision to cut Palestinian funding comes amid a severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where more than 160 Palestinians protesting for their right to return to the areas from which they were forcibly expelled from in 1948 have been killed by Israeli gunfire since March 30 during weeks-long demonstrations near the fence with Israel.

Officials in the Gaza Strip, which has been administered by Hamas since 2007, have previously blasted  the US for its support to Israel, saying that Washington has long lost its regional credibility.

The US had planned to give the Palestinians $251m for good governance, health, education and funding for civil society in the current 2018 budget year that ends on September 30. 

Washington gives Israel annual military aid of $3.1bn. Next year, that figure will increase to $3.8bn under a 10-year deal agreed by Barack Obama shortly before he stepped down as US president.

‘Logic of bullying’

In a controversial and sharply criticised move meanwhile in January, the US government announced that it was withholding $65m of a planned $125m funding instalment to the UNRWA, which provides services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon.

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada publication, said Trump’s decision on Friday might impact health and food assistance programmes but will not be “as severe as the cuts the US has already implemented for UNRWA, which have really inflicted great suffering on some of the most vulnerable Palestinians”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Chicago, he said the political message of the cuts “is to tell the Palestinians that the American approach now is of putting essentially a gun to their heads – that they must go along with whatever the Americans and of course Israel dictates or the US will cut their funds.

“It’s hard to see how the US thinks this will help them get their way,” said Abunimah, adding that Washington’s policy was driven by “the logic of bullying and bludgeoning Palestinians”.

Relations between the US administration and the Palestinian Authority took a nosedive after Trump announced in December the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The Palestinian leadership has since suspended contacts with the administration and consider that it can no longer play a mediation role in the Middle East peace process.

Friday’s decision comes amid a vacuum in Middle East peace efforts as the US administration presses on with work on a peace plan that has been under discussion for months.

Trump has tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner and lawyer Jason Greenblatt to draft the peace proposals.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Excellent bowling from spinners Will Beer and Danny Briggs set up Sussex’s five-wicket T20 Blast quarter-final win over Durham at Chester-Street.

The pair took four wickets between them for just 36 runs as the Jets were restricted to 140-7 – Ben Stokes top-scoring as opener with 34 off 24 balls.

The Sharks fell to 28-2 before Bermuda-born Delray Rawlins hit 42 off 29 balls in a 70-run third wicket stand.

Laurie Evans saw Sussex to 144-5 and victory as he made a fine 63 not out.

Sussex join Lancashire Lightning, winners on Thursday, at Finals Day following their first ever encounter with Durham in Twenty20 cricket.

Having hit 42 off their first three overs the Jets looked on course for a mammoth score, but the spin of Briggs and Beer held back the home side and accounted for England all-rounder Stokes.

The 27-year-old, promoted to open, attempted to reverse sweep Beer but was caught in front just as he was beginning to look dangerous.

With their talisman gone the Jets went 10 overs without a boundary as Sussex suffocated them – Stuart Poynter’s unbeaten 28 from 24 balls giving the total a late boost.

In reply Sussex lost Phil Salt off the third ball of the innings as Stokes took a catch in the deep, while captain Luke Wright went for 12 at the end of the fourth over.

But 20-year-old Rawlins played some super shots despite being given a life on 26 when he was dropped by Nathan Rimmington.

The left-hander went on to hit seven fours before he was eventually caught and bowled by Mark Wood.

Evans went on to make his sixth half-century of this year’s tournament, hitting six fours in a 71-ball innings, in a game in which not a single six was scored.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration will revoke more than $200 million in economic aid for the West Bank and Gaza, the State Department announced Friday.

The move came after a State Department review examining whether the funding was in “U.S. national interests” and of value to American taxpayers. In a terse announcement, the State Department said it would redirect the $200 million to “high-priority projects elsewhere.”

“This decision takes into account the challenges the international community faces in providing assistance in Gaza, where Hamas control endangers the lives of Gaza’s citizens and degrades an already dire humanitarian and economic situation,” the State Department notice said.

The move drew immediate fire from Democrats in Congress, who said it would roil an already volatile part of the world and undermine U.S. efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

“After a year and eight months in office, President Trump has yet to announce anything remotely resembling a coherent policy to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Sen Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

“Inhabitants of Gaza are already suffering severe hardships under the tyranny of Hamas and border restrictions imposed by Israel,” Leahy said. “It is the Palestinian people, virtual prisoners in an increasingly volatile conflict, who will most directly suffer the consequences of this callous and ill-advised attempt to respond to Israel’s security concerns.”

Most U.S. aid to the Palestinians goes toward health care, education, economic development, and infrastructure improvements

The withdrawal of economic aid to the Palestinians comes as the Trump administration is preparing to unveil a highly anticipated Middle East peace plan – an effort that appears to be faltering even before it gets off the ground.

One contentious element of that plan would reportedly tie economic development for Gaza and the West Bank to significant concessions from the Palestinians, including giving permanent control of Jerusalem to the Israelis.

The Trump administration already has frosty a relationship with Palestinian leaders, who see the president as biased towards Israel. The rapport deteriorated significantly after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv in May.

The Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas broke off contact with the U.S. after the Jerusalem announcement.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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“It’s not you. It’s me… and my plummeting stock valuation.” 

In a surprise to absolutely no one, MoviePass has yet another change in store for many of its users. As of today, annual subscribers are getting booted from their unlimited plans and downgraded to three movies per month.

The new annual plan was announced via email. A number of users posted screenshots of it to Twitter.

Citing a specific section of the Terms of Use (rarely a good start), MoviePass informed its annual loyalists that they would immediately be removed from their unlimited plan and put under a three-movies-a-month limit, with $5 off additional movie ticket purchases. 

For those displeased with the change, MoviePass presented a refund for any months remaining on users’ current contracts. However, unhappy customers only have a week to decide on that cancellation. The offer expires August 31.

And, if that weren’t enough, some users who were understandably done with MoviePass and ready to cancel this afternoon… actually couldn’t. Irritated subscribers took to Twitter to document the app’s apparent rejection of user credentials.

Many reached out to MoviePass’s customer support Twitter for help with the error. (Notably, @MoviePass_CS has not posted since July 4. You know, right around when rampant surge pricing became a thing.) That being said, some had success ending their MoviePass relationship.

MoviePass’s official statement does not address the spotty trouble with cancellations, but cheerfully frames the change as aiding in making a larger movie selection possible:

This new offering is part of the transition to our new subscription model.  We’re excited to offer subscribers the option of going to three movies a month for $9.95 and providing up to a $5.00 discount for additional movie tickets. We are grateful to our MoviePass community and have offered a number of our annual subscribers the option for a refund if the new plan doesn’t align with their viewing preferences. With this transition, we intend to offer more film options so subscribers can continue exploring a wide variety of movies.  We believe that our new plan is a positive change in the right direction and that it captures the needs and desires of most of our MoviePass community in our journey for an accessible and quality movie experience.

Reports of sudden, drastic changes and trapped subscribers may seem like just another chapter in the MoviePass saga. But, for those annual subscribers who went all-in on the MoviePass craze, it is the end of an unconditional love. 

RIP, commitment. Hello, three one-night flings a month. (Or, you know, you could begin anew with that AMC alternative. Whatever butters your popcorn.)

For the scores of refugees and migrants on board an Italian coastguard ship, the odyssey of their journey to Europe continues – despite reaching destination. 

Nine days ago, the Diciotti rescued dinghies in distress off the Maltese coast in the Mediterranean. After days of uncertainty at sea, the coastguard vessel was granted permission to dock in the Sicilian port of Catania on Monday.

Of the 177 people on board, only 29 unaccompanied children have been allowed so far by the Italian government to disembark.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister and co-deputy prime minister, announced earlier in the week he would allow people to leave the ship on the condition that other EU countries agreed to share responsibility for them. 

As a result, more than 150 people on board the Diciotti – mostly refugees from Eritrea – sleep on cardboard boxes while waiting for a resolution to the latest European migration standoff. 

All eyes on Friday were on an informal meeting of senior European leaders organised by the European Commission to discuss disembarkation amid threats by Italy to pull funding for the European Union unless member states agreed to take people from the Diciotti in.

But the talks ended without producing a solution for the stranded refugees and migrants, some of whom earlier on Friday reportedly started a hunger strike.

“This was not a meeting where decisions were taken”, a Commission spokesperson said in a statement. “It was a meeting that was organised by the Commission to harvest ideas and contributions to the on-going work to put in place a more predictable, sustainable and cooperative approach on disembarkation and responsibility sharing.”

After the meeting, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned on Facebook that “Italy will act accordingly”.

“We once again take note of the discrepancy, which borders hypocrisy, between words and action,” he said. 

Matteo Villa, a migration research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Studies, told Al Jazeera that “no one expected anything different” from Friday’s talks.

“European countries decided it’s best to avoid expending a lot of political capital to face Italy’s threats.”

Latest standoff

The Diciotti is the latest in a string of cases which saw Italy, as well as Malta, refuse or delay the disembarkation of people rescued in the Central Mediterranean, often after spending many months in detention in Libya. 

“Either Europe starts being serious defending its borders and relocating the immigrants, or we’ll start taking them back to the ports they left from,” Salvini threatened on a Facebook post.

Recent polls say that popular support for his anti-migration League party has been rising since the new government was installed in early June.

Salvini’s communication strategy hasn’t changed since becoming minister, revolving around Facebook live videos watched by tens of thousands of people.

Sometimes, his social media statements seemingly replace official announcements, too.

An Italian daily reported that the Diciotti’s captain, Massimo Kothmeir, received permission to dock from the transport ministry but only later learned from Salvini’s social media accounts that the rescued migrants were not to be allowed off the ship. 

Salvini’s migrant strategy has been condemned by human rights groups, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) calling for the migrants and refugees to be allowed disembarkation. 

“Keeping people hostage is not the right way to ask for more cooperation and solidarity,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Europe and Central Asia at HRW, told Al Jazeera. 

Probes opened

The United Nations and a host of Italian NGOs also called for the migrants to be let off the ship.

Italy’s independent guarantor of the rights of detained people warned that the country was breaching its own constitution as well as the European Convention on Human Rights by depriving people of their liberty without a court order. 

Sicily prosecutors have opened probes for kidnapping and abuse of office “against unknowns”. Salvini defiantly stated he is “waiting” to be arrested. 

Despite some internal dissent – notably from the President of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies Roberto Fico – Salvini is fully supported by the other party in the governing coalition, the Five Star Movement.

The leader of the Five Star Movement and co-deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio told reporters on Thursday that should no decision be reached in Friday’s meeting, Italy should stop paying into the EU budget. 

On Friday, he reiterated that he was “ready to reduce the funds that we give to the European Union” in a Facebook post. 

Italy, whose public debt amounts to 130 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), is expected to approve its 2019 budget in the coming weeks. 

Ad-hoc agreements

Since Italy adopted a hard stance on sea rescues, standoffs on disembarkation to Italian and Maltese ports have been resolved with ad-hoc agreements. 

In July, several European countries promised to relocate 270 out of more than 400 migrants and refugees that had arrived in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo. 

In the days following the deal, Conte said the EU was finally hearing Italy’s arguments on migration, accepting “the principle that immigration is a European challenge”. 

However, as Salvini himself has admitted, only France has so far kept its promise, relocating 47.

The others, who were supposed to depart to Germany, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Malta are presumed to be still waiting at Pozzallo. 

At a June summit, EU leaders agreed on a range of measures including the establishment of asylum “processing centres” both inside the EU and in transit countries. 

Arrivals down

Arrivals to Italy – and to Europe overall – more than halved in 2017 to just over 172,300. More than 3,000 people died or went missing in the same year.

In February 2017, the previous Italian administration signed a memorandum of understanding on migration with Libya’s Government of National Accord.

With EU approval, Italy began training and equipping Libya’s coastguard to perform rescues, “pulling back” migrant boats. 

While arrivals via the central Mediterranean route have continued to decrease, the western route from Morocco to Spain has seen a significant increase and currently records the highest numbers.

Still, the mortality rate has increased in the central Mediterranean. 

“The number of arrivals is very low compared with previous years,” Sunderland, of HRW, told Al Jazeera.

“We are talking about a manageable number. There’s no emergency, let alone an invasion. It is true that over the years the issue of the lack of equal distribution of asylum seekers within Europe has created divisions and tensions.

“At this stage, it has become the main obstacle to any kind of reasonable and rational policy on migration,” Sunderland said, adding that “there is certainly a need for a clear and long-term agreement among European countries to avoid this situation”. 

According to Carlo Ruzza, professor of political sociology at the University of Trento who studies populist movements and anti-populism, whether or not the strategy has achieved its own purpose is less important than the consensus it gathers. 

“Objectively nothing has changed much,” Ruzza told Al Jazeera.

“What is important is creating a sense of opposition towards an external enemy, the European Union, which makes us feel like a large community, reinforcing the idea we are persecuted and helping us trust a charismatic leader, the only one able to fight this enemy.”

“The problem is that [leaders] are not really dialoguing with Europe,” Ruzza concluded.

“They are speaking with the Italian electorate.”

Daniel Ayala scored a stoppage-time winner as unbeaten Middlesbrough went top of the Championship and end West Bromwich Albion’s recent resurgence.

Boro had dominated the match from start to finish, but had to wait until the 91st minute before Spanish centre-half Ayala eventually found a way through from close range.

Middlesbrough had squandered numerous opportunities prior to that, with Martin Braithwaite most guilty when he blazed high and wide from inside the six-yard box.

Ryan Shotton headed over and Stewart Downing’s fierce strike forced Sam Johnstone into a smart save – but boss Tony Pulis was not to be denied a victory against his former employers.

Boro have now won four in a row after drawing their opening league game, responding superbly to the disappointment of losing in the play-off semi-finals in 2017-18.

They were rarely troubled by Darren Moore’s side, who looked a long way short of reproducing the attacking flair displayed in their 4-3 win at Norwich and last week’s 7-1 hammering of Queens Park Rangers.

The closest they came to scoring was when Aden Flint smashed an awkward attempted clearance against the underside of his own crossbar.

Despite enjoying 62% of the possession, the Baggies were at their most dangerous on the break – with Dwight Gayle wasting a two-on-one situation early in the second half.

West Brom, relegated from the Premier League last season, remain in seventh after two wins from their first five Championship matches.