Britons post Brexit

From looking up their European ancestry to seeking out a continental soulmate, some Britons are leaving no stone unturned in their bid to keep ties with Europe after the nation’s vote to leave the union.

So far, nobody knows whether British citizens will face curbs on living and working in the European Union post-Brexit but the uncertainty has led many with as-yet-unfulfilled claims to both British and EU rights to file their paperwork.

The easiest way to obtain an EU passport is through an ancestral link to a country within the bloc and Ireland is the most likely choice for Britons.

An estimated 10 percent of British citizens have claims to Irish citizenship, which can be granted to grandchildren of its citizens.

“Before the referendum, I was thinking about applying for Irish citizenship but I wasn’t going to do it unless we voted to leave because I felt it was dishonest,” journalist Johanna Derry told AFP.

Since the vote, Derry has gathered the documents needed to be placed on the Irish foreign birth registry, opening the way for a full application.

“I feel like I’m European, so in order to stay European... it just makes sense,” she said.

“I have been accused of maybe betraying my English roots... but I have so much Irish culture in my family life that it doesn’t jar with me.”

Such was the demand for Irish passports in the wake of the June 23 shock vote that Ireland’s foreign minister Charlie Flanagan pleaded for a slowdown, warning consular offices were under “significant pressure”.

UNEARTHING THE FAMILY TREE
Meanwhile, Germany’s embassy in London told AFP there had been “a spike in information requests regarding German citizenship” immediately after the vote.

More surprisingly, around 400 British Jews whose ancestors were forced to flee Portugal five centuries ago were reported to have applied for citizenship in the southern European country.

“We are receiving a dozen requests a day,” Michael Rothwell, a spokesman of the Jewish community in Porto, told AFP.

Until the Brexit vote, only five Britons had applied for Portuguese citizenship under a law passed in March 2015 offering Sephardic Jews nationality as a form of reparation for the persecution their ancestors suffered.

Family tree finding website ancestry.co.uk said it had reported a “significant upturn” in people researching their family history following the referendum result.

“Ancestry has seen trial memberships for new users go up 40 percent,” said Sue Moncur, UK manager for the website.

“At the same time searches for Irish records have gone up by 20 percent week on week,” she added.

FIND LOVE OVER BREXIT
For those without a genetic claim, love could be the answer.

Britons with EU spouses will retain the right to live and work on the continent under EU law, although the right to citizenship is up to the individual country.

To give matters a helping hand, British students Katy Edelsten and Chloe Cordon have set up a dating site called Idbenothingwithouteu.co.uk, which aims to “match up as many lovely couples as possible, who we hope will fall so madly deeply in love that they can’t help but get hitched.”

The website has attracted thousands of members, and its creators hope to extend the service for concerned Britons living on the continent.

“Nobody wants to get married just for a passport,” Edelsten told AFP.

“It’s just another fun way to date at the moment when there’s all these other ways, so why not find love over Brexit.

“Our ultimate goal would be for some people to actually fall in love and then we can have an en-masse wedding, with EU rings and wedding cakes.”

Pak girl drowns while attempting to take selfie

An 11-year-old girl drowned on Tuesday after falling into a river in northern Pakistan while attempting to take a selfie and her parents also died trying to save her, officials said.

The drownings occurred in the Kunhar river that flows through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, at a hilly tourist spot in Beesian village, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Islamabad.

The deep, rocky and fastflowing river is popular for white-water rafting.

“The girl, Safia Atif, was trying to take a selfie along the river when she slipped and fell,” local police official Arshad Khan told AFP, explaining the incident was witnessed by other tourists.

Safia’s mother Shazia Atif then jumped in to save her daughter but was swept away.
“Seeing both his wife and daughter drowning, the father Atif Hussain also jumped in to rescue them but he met a similar fate,” Khan added.

“The dead bodies of the mother and daughter have been recovered while we are still looking for the body of Hussain,” he added.

He said the parents were doctors from Punjab province and had taken their family to the area on holiday. They are survived by a nine-year-old daughter and six-year-old son who witnessed the event.

“Both of them are in the protective custody of the local administration and they will be handed over to their family members when they arrive,” he said.

The incident was confirmed by other administration officials and family members of the deceased.

One official said the government had put up signs warning people not to go near the river.

“Each year around a dozen people drown here,” he said requesting not to be named.

“This is a tourist spot and people usually come here for picnic and most of them are outsiders who have no idea about the depth of the river,” he said.

So-called “selfie deaths” have surged with the global rise of smartphones.

On July 5, Peruvian police recovered the body of a South Korean tourist under a waterfall in the Amazon jungle, days after he fell in while taking a photo of himself.

A week earlier a 51-year-old German tourist plunged 200 metres (650 feet) to his death while posing for a photo on a mountainside at Peru’s top archaeological site, Machu Picchu.

Turkey PM retreat from calls for death penalty

Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim said Tuesday a fair trial would represent a harsher punishment for suspected coup plotters than the death penalty—an apparent step back from threats to re-introduce capital punishment.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had suggested Turkey could bring back capital punishment—abolished in 2004 as part of the country’s reforms to join the European Union—in the wake of the July 15 failed coup aimed at ousting him from power.
The threat stunned the EU, which makes the abolition of capital punishment an unnegotiable condition for joining the bloc.
“A person dies only once when executed,” Yildirim told ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MPs in parliament.
“There are tougher ways to die than the death (penalty) for them. That is an impartial and fair trial,” Yildirim said.
The prime minister’s comments marked a change in tone after Erdogan said earlier this month that if the Turkish public wanted a return to capital punishment, then political parties would follow their will.
Erdogan has also not mentioned the issue in his latest speeches in recent days.
Relations between Brussels and Ankara have already been strained since Turkey responded to the coup by launching a relentless crackdown against alleged plotters in state institutions, amid calls from the EU to act within the rule of law.
Tens of thousands of staff within the military, judiciary, civil service and education have been dismissed or detained since a rogue faction within the military tried to oust Erdogan from power.
Ankara blames Erdogan’s ally-turned-foe Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher in self-exile in the United States, and his movement for ordering last month’s coup bid. Gulen strongly denies the accusations.
Yildirim said Gulen would be brought to account for the attempted putsch during which 240 people lost their lives, excluding 34 coup plotters who were killed.
“Those responsible for the blood of our martyrs will be brought to account. We will not bring them to account acting out of revenge. We will bring them to account with justice,” the prime minister said.
No judicial executions have taken place Turkey since left-wing militant Hidir Aslan was hanged on October 25, 1984 in the wake of the 1980 military coup.

Raid on 44 firms in Turkey

Turkish police launched simultaneous raids on 44 companies in Istanbul on Tuesday and had warrants to detain 120 company executives as part of the investigation into last month’s attempted military coup, state-run Anadolu agency reported.

It said the companies were accused of giving financial support to the movement of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating the 15 July putsch. He denies any involvement.

Police began searches in the Uskudar and Umraniye districts of Istanbul, including buildings belonging to an unnamed holding company, the agency said.

Since the coup, more than 35,000 people have been detained, of whom 17,000 have been placed under formal arrest, and tens of thousands more suspended in a purge of Turkey’s military, law-and-order, education and justice systems.

Erdogan accuses Gulen of harnessing an extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and abroad over decades, to infiltrate state institutions and build a “parallel structure” that aimed to take over the country.

He vowed this month to cut off the revenues of businesses linked to Gulen, describing them as “nests of terrorism” and promising no mercy in rooting them out.

Before the failed coup, in which more than 240 people were killed, the authorities had already seized Islamic lender Bank Asya, taken over or closed several media companies and detained businessmen on allegations of funding the cleric’s
movement.

As part of the coup investigation, police also searched offices at the main courthouse on the Asian side of Istanbul on Wednesday as they raided the complex with detention warrants for 83 judicial personnel, Anadolu reported.

A day earlier police detained at least 136 court staff in raids on three halls of justice, including Turkey’s largest courthouse, on the European side of the city.

A former lawmaker from the ruling AK Party, Aydin Biyiklioglu, was also remanded in custody along with seven academics in the Black Sea city of Trazbon as part of the investigation, Anadolu said.