World
Spain set for migration deal with US to accept Latin American refugees
Asylum seekers from Latin America will be able to apply to go to Canada, Spain and the US in migrant processing centres set up in their home countries.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is on Friday due to hold talks with US President Joe Biden to collaborate on a deal over migration and to seek a united front over the war in Ukraine.
Along with Canada, the US will seek to finalise a deal with Spain over migration hubs in Latin America so migrants can apply from their own countries to flee poverty and violence.
Spain and Canada badly need labour and have signalled they are willing to accept migrants from Latin America as well as other countries in a move that will ease pressure on the US which faces an influx of migrants along its border with Mexico.
The war between Russia and Ukraine will also loom large over the talks in the White House.
Spain will assume the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union in July and will lead the EU in efforts to find peace.
The Biden administration has ended pandemic controls along its border with Mexico -known as Title 42 – and unveiled new immigration measures which are expected to change how migrants arrive at the US-Mexico border.
While these efforts are designed to still crack down on illegal crossings, they will also open legal ways for migrants to apply for asylum online in their own countries, instead of making the often-deadly journey to the border.
At present, those caught trying to cross the US border illegally cannot return for five years and they face criminal prosecution.
A series of migrant processing centres have been set up in Colombia and Guatemala but are not yet operational. Up to 100 others will be set up in other countries where migrants can apply to come to Canada, Spain and the US.
For the White House, persuading Spain and Canada to take in migrants will be a political victory as the Biden administration views the migration crisis facing the Americas as a global problem that needs a global solution – much like the refugee crises that have impacted Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine in recent years.
The US has increasingly seen migrants arrive at its Southern border who are from China, Ukraine, Haiti, Russia and other nations far from Latin America. Family groups and children traveling alone make up an increasingly bigger share of these migrants.
Thirty years ago, by contrast, illegal crossings were almost always single adults from Mexico who were easily returned back over the border.
Carlota García Encina, a specialist in US-Spanish relations at the Real Elcano Institute, a Madrid-based think-tank, said the migration deal was important for both the US and Spain.
“The US sees the problem of migration as a global problem so it is important that other countries like Spain and Canada share its view on this,” she told Euronews.
“For Spain it is a change for bilateral cooperation with the US. Normally, it deals with Washington through Brussels.”
Spain, like many other nations, needs workers, and it will be able to choose migrants who have skills needed in the country.
Madrid said the pathway will only apply to those who have already received international protection status.
That means the migrants it accepts will need to be considered refugees and will be treated in much the same way that Syrian asylum seekers, coming via Turkey, have been treated by Spain.
One of the worst hit countries by the pandemic, Spain has struggled to find workers to fill posts in the key tourism, construction, agriculture and technology sectors as its economy recovers.
Last year, Jose Luis Escriva, Spain’s social security and migration minister, said Madrid planned to relax work permit rules for foreigners.
Sánchez is expected to discuss with Biden his recent talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, both of whom have put forward ideas to end the conflict in Ukraine.
The Spanish leader is expected to urge Biden to consider the views of other countries outside Europe on the best way to end the war.
World
Malaysia says it will resume search for wreckage of missing Flight MH370
World
Iran expands weaponization capabilities critical for employing nuclear bomb
The Islamic Republic of Iran has continued its pursuit of obtaining a nuclear weapon by not only stockpiling enriched uranium to near-weapons grade purity, it has expanded its covert actions in developing its weaponization capabilities.
According to information obtained by sources embedded in the Iranian regime and supplied to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an opposition organization based out of D.C. and Paris, there are indications that Tehran has once again renewed efforts to advance its ability to detonate a nuclear weapon.
At the head of Iran’s detonators program is an organization the NCRI has dubbed METFAZ, which is the Farsi acronym for the Center for Research and Expansion of Technologies on Explosions and Impact, and its recent movements at a previously deactivated site, known as Sanjarian, has drawn immense speculation.
IRAN HIDING MISSILE, DRONE PROGRAMS UNDER GUISE OF COMMERCIAL FRONT TO EVADE SANCTIONS
“Our information shows the METFAZ has expanded its activities, intensified activities, and their main focus is basically the detonation of the nuclear bomb,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI in the U.S., told Fox News Digital. “When you make a bomb, you have the fissile material at the center of it, but you need to be able to trigger it, to detonate it, and that’s a sophisticated process.
“It’s important to see what METFAZ does and follow their activities because that is sort of like a gauge on figuring out where the whole nuclear weapons program is,” he added.
Iran has at least a dozen sites across the country dedicated to nuclear development, weaponization, research and heavy water production, but information shared with Fox News Digital suggests that there has been an increase in covert activity in at least two of these locations, including Sanjarian, which was once one of Iran’s top weaponization facilities.
The Sanjarian site, located roughly 25 miles east of Tehran and once central to Iran’s nuclear program under what is known as the Amad Plan, was believed to have been largely inactive between 2009 and late 2020 after stiff international pushback on Iran’s nuclear program.
Though by October 2020 renewed activity had returned to the area under the alleged guise of a filming team, first captured through satellite imagery and which the Islamic Republic used to justify why vehicles had reportedly been regularly parked outside the formerly top nuclear site.
In 2022, trees were planted along the entrance road to the compound, effectively blocking satellite imagery from monitoring vehicles stationed there, before a security gate was then believed to have been installed in May 2023, according to information also verified by the Institute for Science and International Security.
Now, according to details supplied by on-the-ground sources to the NCRI this month, top nuclear experts have been seen regularly visiting the site since April 2024 and are believed to be operating under the front company known as Arvin Kimia Abzaar, which claims to be affiliated with the oil and gas industry, a sector in which Iran has long attempted to conceal its activities.
ISRAEL EYES IRAN NUKE SITES AMID REPORTS TRUMP MULLS MOVES TO BLOCK TEHRAN ATOMIC PROGRAM
Jafarzadeh said one of the executives of the Arvin Kimia Abzaar company is Saeed Borji, who has been a well-known member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps since 1980 and has long headed METFAZ.
METFAZ falls under Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which is widely known to security experts as the organization spearheading Iran’s nuclear development and is suspected of using the Sanjarian site for renewed research on exoloding bridgewire (EWB) detonators.
Iran has previously attempted to conceal its EBW detonators program, a system first invented in the 1940s to deploy atomic warheads but which has expanded into non-military sectors, under activities relating to the oil industry.
In a 2015 report, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), noted that Iran’s detonator development was an “integral part of a program to develop an implosion-type nuclear explosive device.”
It also highlighted how Iran attempted to conceal its program by alleging during a May 20, 2014, meeting that the detonator program dating back to 2000-2003 was related to Tehran’s aerospace industry and was needed to “help prevent explosive accidents” but which the IAEA determined was “inconsistent with the timeframe and unrelated to the detonator development program.”
During the same 2014 meeting, Iran claimed that “around 2007 its oil and gas industry had identified a requirement for EBW detonators for the development of deep borehole severing devices.”
FALL OF SYRIA’S BASHAR ASSAD IS STRATEGIC BLOW TO IRAN AND RUSSIA, EXPERTS SAY
The IAEA assessed that while the application of EBW detonators, which are fired within “sub-microsecond simultaneity,” are “not inconsistent with specialized industry practices,” the detonators that Iran has developed “have characteristics relevant to a nuclear explosive device.”
“The Iranian regime has really basically, over the years, used deceptive tactics – lies, stalling, playing games, dragging [their feet], wasting time,” Jafarzadeh said when asked about this report. “That’s the way they’re dealing with the IAEA, with the goal of moving their own nuclear weapons program forward without being accountable for anything.”
The IAEA did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions on the NCRI’s most recent findings, which were shared with the nuclear watchdog this week, and it remains unclear what advancements or research Iran continues to pursue in the detonator field.
“While the international community and the IAEA have mainly focused on the amount and the enrichment level of uranium Tehran possesses, which would provide fissile material for the bomb, the central part, namely the weaponization, has continued with little scrutiny,” Jafarzadeh told Fox News Digital.
The NCRI also found that METFAZ, which operates out of a military site known as Parchin some 30 miles southeast of Tehran, has expanded its Plan 6 complex where it conducts explosive tests and production.
Parchin, which is made up of several military industrial complexes, was targeted in Israel’s October 2024 strikes. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, the strikes destroyed “multiple buildings” within the complex, including a “high explosive test chamber” known as Taleghan 2.
Iran’s layered approach to its nuclear program, which relies on networks operating under the guise of privately owned companies, false operations and immense ambiguity, has made tracking Tehran’s nuclear program difficult for even agencies dedicated to nuclear security, like the IAEA, Jafarzadeh said.
“The regime has used deceptive tactics to prevent any mechanism for verification, and it has yet to provide an opportunity or the means for the IAEA to have a satisfactory answer to the inquiries it has raised,” he told Fox News Digital. “Our revelation today shows that the regime has no transparency related to its program for building an atomic bomb and is moving towards building the bomb at a rapid pace.”
The NCRI confirms that neither the Sanjarian site nor Parchin’s Plan 6 have ever been inspected by the IAEA.
World
At least eight migrants drown after boat collision off Greece’s coast
Authorities say at least eight people died after the driver lost control of the boat as he attempted to flee.
At least eight refugees and migrants have drowned off the coast of Greece after the coastguard chased a boat they were on in the Aegean Sea.
The speedboat capsized near the island of Rhodes as it attempted to flee a Greek patrol vessel, authorities said on Friday, adding that 18 people were rescued.
A coastguard statement said the driver “lost control” of the boat, causing several passengers to fall overboard.
Coastguard vessels retrieved eight bodies as a helicopter from the Hellenic Air Force searched for survivors. It remains unclear how many people were on board.
Greek authorities said they detected the vessel as it attempted to disembark people near Afandou Beach, on the eastern coast of the Greek island of Rhodes.
Greek media outlet Kathimerini reported that the boat collided with the coastguard’s vessel during the chase, adding that the driver of the boat was arrested.
Greece has seen a 25-percent rise this year in the number of migrant and refugee arrivals, with a 30-percent rise in Rhodes and the southeast Aegean, according to the Ministry of Migration and Asylum.
In late November, nine people, including six minors and two women, died after two boats sank in separate incidents near the islands of Samos and Lesbos.
Another five people died in a sinking near the island of Crete earlier this month.
Greece has been accused of adopting an increasingly hostile approach towards migration in recent years. Its coastguard has been repeatedly accused by asylum seekers and humanitarian organisations of capsizing boats by trying to tow them or prevent their disembarkation on its coasts.
The European Union also found evidence of human rights abuses at the recently constructed, EU-funded refugee camps on the Greek Aegean islands, including allegations of sexual and other violence against children.
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