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Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Latest: German county declares refugee emergency

Officials in Main-Taunus county west of Frankfurt say the unusual action aims to make it easier for authorities to cope with the influx, for example by suspending certain building regulations. Defense Ministry spokesman Petr Medek says the soldiers are ready to join police forces on the border with Austria in two hours. Sweden's prime minister says preliminary estimates indicate more than 150,000 asylum seekers will arrive in the country this year. The government has ordered the Swedish Migration Agency to set up tents to provide temporary accommodation and has tasked local authorities with drawing up an inventory of all premises in the country that can be used as shelters. The southern state of Bavaria is calling on the German government to turn refugees back at the country's border if it can't get other European Union countries to abide by rules that mean newcomers are supposed to be processed in the first EU country where they arrive. Governor Horst Seehofer and his conservative government have been the most prominent domestic critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming approach to refugees. Germany's interior minister says his office has recorded more than 490 attacks — ranging from arson to racist graffiti — on refugee shelters this year. Minister Ante Kotromanovic, speaking Friday while visiting a migrant camp in eastern Croatia, said the exodus of Syrians and other people fleeing war and poverty is "a big business, which is organized." Hungary's president has warned that solidarity with refugees escaping war must not overshadow concerns about human trafficking and the threat from extremists in relation to the migrant crisis. Janos Ader said Friday that while "the humanitarian aspects are very important, especially with the coming winter ... we would be making a big political mistake if we neglect the criminal and national security aspects of this migration wave." Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasized that the European Union's plan to distribute 120,000 refugees on a per-country quota was "not an effective solution" to the migrant crisis and that the large number of migrants reaching Croatia, Hungary, Italy or Greece was "a problem of the whole European Union and that is how this issue should be approached." Lofven says his country was preparing itself for a crisis situation, adding tent camps could be erected in camping sites to house the refugees. At a joint news conference Friday, Justice Minister Morgan Johansson said Sweden had reached "a very dramatic stage" and had so far received more than 115,000 applications this year. An Italian police aircraft carrying 19 Eritreans has taken off from Rome's Ciampino airport bringing the first refugees to Sweden under the European Union's new resettlement program aimed at redistributing asylum-seekers from hard-hit receiving countries. Greece's coast guard says it has rescued 542 people in 12 search and rescue incidents from Thursday morning to Friday morning. Greece's coast guard says a wooden boat carrying a large number of refugees or other migrants has run aground on the small eastern Aegean island of Leros, while an infant died after the inflatable dinghy he was in partially sank off the coast of Lesbos island. In the Lesbos incident, the coast guard rescued 56 people from the sea Thursday night after the rear part of their dinghy burst, partially sinking the boat.


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