Day: December 9, 2022

Two additional vessels are being deployed in what the French Coastguard describes as an "unprecedented" move. It follows criticism of the French response to the incident in November 2021 in which 27 people drowned trying to cross to the UK in a dinghy. More than 40,000 people have made such crossings this year - a record number. The French Coastguard says the Lapérouse survey vessel has just arrived in the port of Calais, while the Kermorvan patrol ship will be there in the next few days. It says that their deployment will strengthen the coastguard's rescue capabilities in the Channel-North Sea sector. Last month, the UK agreed to increase payments to France by £8m ($10m) more a year to £63m to try to stop channel crossings in sm...

Japan announced Friday that it will jointly develop its next-generation fighter jet with the U.K. and Italy as Tokyo looks to expand defense cooperation beyond its traditional ally, the United States. The Mitsubishi F-X fighter jet will replace the aging fleet of F-2 that Japan previously developed with the United States. Japan’s F-X and Britain’s Tempest, a successor to the Eurofighter Typhoon, will be combined into the next-generation combat aircraft for deployment in 2035. The deal will give Japan greater support in countering China’s growing assertiveness and allow Britain a bigger presence in the Indo-Pacific region. Friday’s fighter jet announcement came four days after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced spending targets aimed at building up Japan’s military capability, includ...

An unprecedented crisis of confidence is shaking a historic center of Catholicism in Germany — the Archdiocese of Cologne. Catholic believers have protested their deeply divisive archbishop and are leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports. While Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki’s personal fate is in the hands of Pope Francis, the drama has reverberations nationwide, given that the Cologne archdiocese has more Catholics than any other in Germany -- about 1.8 million. Its double-domed cathedral is an iconic tourist attraction and one of the oldest, most important pilgrimage sites of Northern Europe. And the crisis in Cologne, in which many thousands of Catholics in the region have left the church, is in some ways a microcosm of the issues playi...