South Korean tourists were not wearing life jackets in fatal boat collision that left 7 dead, 21 missing: o... - Fox News

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry office said Friday that none of the passengers involved in the deadly sightseeing boat accident in Hungary that left at least seven dead were wearing life jackets when their boat capsized.

Officials are still searching for 21 more people that vanished after a Hungarian tour boat was struck by a Viking cruise ship after returning from an hourlong night tour on the Danube River in Budapest Wednesday night.

South Korean diplomats sent to investigate the crash informed the Foreign Ministry that none of the 33 tourists aboard the boat were wearing life jackets at the time of the collision, adding that it was “customary” for tourists on this particular tour not to wear them.

South Korean Embassy personnel help identifying the victims of an accident during a search operation for survivors on the River Danube in downtown Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, May 30, 2019. (Zsolt Szigetvary/MTI via AP)

SIGHTSEEING BOAT SINKS IN BUDAPEST DANUBE RIVER; AT LEAST 7 CONFIRMED DEAD

The boat was identified as the Hableany belonging to the Panorama Deck Boating company. It consisted of two decks and had a capacity of 60 people, or 45 for sightseeing cruises.

The victims were a group of tourists that left South Korea on May 25 as part of a group touring Europe, a South Korean travel agency, Very Good Tour, said. They were set to return on June 1.

National disaster management rescue staff participate in a search operation for survivors on the River Danube in downtown Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, May 30, 2019, following a collision of a hotel ship and a smaller tourist cruise ship on the previous evening. (Peter Lakatos/MTI via AP)

BOAT SINKS ON CONGO LAKE LEAVING AT LEAST 30 DEAD, 200 MISSING

The party consisted of 30 tourists, two guides and a photographer. There were also two Hungarians on the boat that operated the vessel.

Senior agency official Lee Sang-moo disclosed the identities of the rescued — six women and one man, aged between 31 and 66. The company is arranging for family members of the tourists to travel to Hungary as soon as possible. A six-year-old girl was among one of the passengers still missing.

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Hungarian police have expanded their search as heavy downpours on Thursday increased the river’s flow. One person was found two miles from the original crash site. Officials are looking further downstream into Serbia.

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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2019-05-30 12:17:34Z
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Rescuers scour waters for survivors after Danube boat disaster leaves 7 dead, 21 missing - The Washington Post

BUDAPEST — Rescue divers and boats using spotlights and radar scanners made a last-ditch attempt to find survivors on Thursday after a sightseeing boat sank on the River Danube in the Hungarian capital during an evening downpour, leaving seven people confirmed dead and 21 missing.

The dead and 19 of the missing were South Korean tourists who were not wearing life jackets, officials said. The boat collided with a larger cruise ship during a rainstorm, before overturning and sinking, police reported.

A video presented by police showed the Hableany (Mermaid), a 89-foot double-decker cruise boat, heading north next to the much larger Sigyn, from cruise line operator Viking, when the two collided Wednesday night.

Police said the smaller vessel swerved into the larger one, was struck, turned on its side and then sank in seconds. They have opened a criminal investigation into the incident, which took place just after 9 p.m.

Viking said no one aboard its ship was injured and that it is cooperating with authorities. The company, with offices in Switzerland and California, provided no further details.

The ship is now anchored nearby. The collision took place in the heart of Budapest near the ornate parliament building.

The company operating the Hableany, Panorama Deck, expressed its condolences and said it had offered financial aid to all those involved in the accident, adding that the boat and been in its service since 2003 and its 58-year-old captain was an experienced sailor.

Officials in Seoul confirmed that seven South Korean tourists are dead and 19 others are missing. Two Hungarian crew members are also listed as missing.

South Korea’s government said it was sending a team of 33 emergency rescue workers, military experts and officials to Hungary to help with the rescue effort.

“What’s most important is speed,” President Moon Jae-in said at an emergency government meeting. He instructed officials to use “all available resources to help.”

Seoul’s Foreign Ministry and the Very Good Tour Agency, which organized the trip, said 30 South Korean tourists, two tour guides and a photographer, as well two Hungarian crew members, were aboard the boat when it sank. 

Seven people were rescued from the water and have been hospitalized, said Pal Gyorfi, a spokesman for Hungary’s National Ambulance Service, according to the Associated Press. They were suffering from hypothermia but stable. Four have since been released and returned to their hotels. Gyorfi expressed doubt that many more survivors would be found.

Water temperatures were between 50 and 54 degrees Fahrenheit (10 and 12 Celsius).

Most of the tourists were traveling with their families, and the group included a 6-year-old girl whose name did not appear on the list of survivors provided by the tour agency, the AP reported. The survivors included six women and one man between the ages of 31 and 66, the news agency said.

With rain continuing, currents swirling and the river flowing fast, rescuers were searching several miles downstream from the accident.

The National Directorate General for Disaster Management said it will be a complex operation to raise the stricken boat from where it sank near the Margit Bridge that connects the two halves of the capital — the twin cities of Buda and Pest — and will likely involve the construction of a pontoon bridge.

The popularity of cruises through the historic heart of Budapest in recent years has resulted in increasing numbers of boats clogging the Danube, raising concerns over possible collisions.

Budapest mayor, Istavan Tarlos, who is seeking reelection in the fall, told the Index online news portal that he was in talks with the relevant ministry about the rules governing these boats and whether they should be allowed into the downtown area.

Denyer reported from Tokyo.

Read more:

After ferry disaster, a Katrina-like reckoning in South Korea

South Korea starts lifting Sewol ferry, almost three years after disaster

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2019-05-30 12:10:20Z
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As Everest Melts, Bodies Are Emerging From the Ice - The New York Times

KATHMANDU, Nepal — A few years ago, Kami Rita Sherpa, a veteran climber and guide, met with a gruesome sight at Mount Everest Base Camp. Human bones poked from the ground, smooth and ice-crusted.

It was not a fluke. Subsequent seasons yielded more remains — a skull, fingers, parts of legs. Guides increasingly believe that their findings fit into a broader development on the world’s highest mountain: A hotter climate has been unearthing climbers who never made it home.

“Snow is melting and bodies are surfacing,” said Mr. Sherpa, who has summited Everest 24 times, a world record. “Finding bones has become the new normal for us.”

In the last few seasons, climbers say they have seen more bodies lying on the icy slopes of Everest than ever before. Both the climbers and the Nepalese government believe this is the grim result of global warming, which is rapidly melting the mountain’s glaciers and in the process exposing bones, old boots and full corpses from doomed missions decades ago.

The Nepalese government is struggling with what to do. More than 100 bodies may be lying on Everest, and there is an open debate about whether to remove them or leave them be. Some climbers believe that fallen comrades have become a part of the mountain and should remain so. A number of the bodies are remarkably preserved: Sun-bleached parkas outline faces frozen into the color of charcoal.

Gelje Sherpa, a guide and six-time summiteer, said that when he first climbed Everest in 2008 he found three bodies. During a recent season, he saw at least double that number.

“They often haunt me,” he said.

Over the past six decades, about 300 climbers have died during Everest expeditions, mostly from storms, falls or altitude sickness. This season has been one of the deadliest, with at least 11 fatalities, some of them partly attributable to an excess of climbers on the mountain.

The Nepalese government said Wednesday that it was considering changing the rules on who could climb the mountain to avoid traffic jams and unruly behavior at the summit.

Image

The number of people who try to climb Everest has been increasing, causing overcrowding that some guides believe has contributed to a spike in deaths this season.CreditPrakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, estimated that the bodies of at least one-third of all who have died on Everest remain there. Some of them are in pieces, pulled apart by avalanches, he said.

It is very dangerous to remove remains from the top of the mountain. A frozen body can weigh over 300 pounds. To carry that extra weight over deep crevasses with precipitous drops and erratic weather would put even more climbers in life-threatening binds.

Still, some families have insisted on recovering the bodies of their loved ones, which entails a separate mission that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Generally, the bodies of climbers who die above 21,000 feet are left in place.

“On the mountain, everything is weighed against the risk of death,” Ang Tshering Sherpa said. “It is better to bring down the bodies if possible. But climbers should always give first priority to safety. Dead bodies can claim their lives.”

The emerging bodies are part of a bigger change on the mountain. In the last decade, climate change has quickly reshaped the whole Himalayan region.

The snow line on Everest is higher than it was just a few years ago. Areas once coated in dense ice are now exposed. Climbers are trading ice axes for rock pitons, spikes that are hammered into cracks on the mountain wall.

In 2016, Nepal’s army drained a lake near Everest after rapid glacial melting threatened to cause a catastrophic flood downstream. This year, a study found that the growing area of ponds on top glaciers across the Everest region — which can both signal melting and accelerate it — had greatly increased in the last three years, far outpacing the rate of change from the first decade and a half of the 2000s.

Kami Rita Sherpa worried that scaling Everest, which sits near a major glacier and straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet, was becoming more complex — a troubling development as the mountain continues to be commercialized and to attract inexperienced climbers.

“It will be harder to summit in the coming days if the ice continues to melt,” he said.

The forecast looks grim. In a study on high-altitude warming released in February, scientists warned that even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, one third of Himalayan glaciers will melt by the end of the century. If global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the number could jump to two-thirds, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment.

The report touches on elevation-dependent warming. It is well known that temperature changes from greenhouse gases are amplified at higher latitudes, such as in the Arctic. But there is growing evidence that warming rates are also greater at higher elevations.

Image

The growing number of climbers has caused congestion at the summit of Everest.CreditNirmal Purja/@Nimsdai Project Possible, via Associated Press

In October, a landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change found that if greenhouse gas emissions continued at the current rate, the atmosphere would warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040. Under the same scenario in the Himalayas, that figure could reach 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.1 degrees Celsius), the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment found.

Dandu Raj Ghimire, the director general of Nepal’s department of tourism management, which oversees mountain expeditions, said the emergence of bodies indicated how the region had already changed. After Sherpas reported finding several bodies last year, Mr. Ghimire’s office started looking for ways to safely remove them.

Ahead of this year’s spring climbing season, which typically stretches to the end of May, Nepal’s tourism ministry asked expedition operators to compile lists of deceased mountaineers who were left on Everest and other peaks.

This year, volunteers have collected more than 20,000 pounds of trash — plastic bottles, old ropes, tents, food tins — from Everest. The exercise was also billed as an opportunity to remove bodies. In April, four more unidentified people were found on the mountain.

Mr. Ghimire said that the remains had been moved to Kathmandu for autopsies. If they cannot be identified, the police will cremate them.

“We will absolutely bring down all objects that have emerged from the ice,” he said.

Their work is unlikely to extend to the upper reaches of Everest, where summertime temperatures routinely dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit (nearly minus-18 Celsius) and oxygen levels are a third of those at sea level. At that altitude, some bodies have become sobering markers.

For years, an American woman who died while descending was a fixture near the summit, until a climber wrapped her body in a flag and moved it out of sight in the 2000s. The body was commonly called “Sleeping Beauty.”

At 27,900 feet above sea level, people have also trudged past “Green Boots,” a body curled under a limestone rock and named for the climber’s neon-colored footwear. The body is thought to be that of an Indian mountaineer who died in 1996 during the blizzard that inspired the best-selling book “Into Thin Air.”

For many climbers, the bodies are a jarring reminder of the mountain’s perils. During her 2017 expedition, Vibeke Andrea Sefland, a Norwegian climber, said she had passed four bodies, including a friend’s.

“It for sure affects me,” she said. “It is very intense when you meet them for the first time, when your headlamp catches them. I always halt and give them a little prayer.”

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2019-05-30 09:01:43Z
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Opinion | Netanyahu Won the Election. Why Is Israel Doing It Over? - The New York Times

TEL AVIV — In early April, Benjamin Netanyahu won an election that was supposed to send him to an unprecedented 11th consecutive year as Israel’s prime minister. There was only one small obstacle in his way: forming a government.

The day after the election I predicted that “the coalition that he forms will probably have little more than the minimum 61 seats behind it.” I was wrong by one. Mr. Netanyahu was able to bring together 60 seats out of the Knesset’s 120 — and not a single one more.

At midnight on Wednesday, his deadline to form a government expired. He has only one, costly option now: sending Israeli voters back to the polls and starting over. It looks as if we’ll be voting again in mid-September.

How did this happen?

To really understand it, you have to go back many decades.

In Israel, all citizens are supposed to serve in the military or perform another type of national service. But one group has been relieved of this duty since the state was established: the ultra-Orthodox, known here as Haredim, who make up about 10 percent of the population. Thanks to their high birthrate, the Haredim double in number every 10 to 15 years. When deferment began in 1948 there were about 400 Haredim eligible for it. Today there are more than 50,000. According to Israel’s bureau of statistics, as much as a third of Israel’s population will be Haredi by 2065.

Young Haredi men study the Torah instead of wearing a uniform. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a vast majority of Israelis believe this is unfair.

The Supreme Court doesn’t like the arrangement either. In 2017, the court declared it unconstitutional and demanded new legislation that could withstand judicial review. Since then, the court agreed to grant the government a few postponements, but now the deadline is near. The new government, when formed, must pass a new law to continue the Haredim’s national service exemption. If it fails to do so, the court could decide that the arrangement is void, and prompt a political and social crisis by in essence ordering the state to draft many thousands of reluctant, disobedient, Haredim.

And here’s the problem. The political parties representing the ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset (currently, with 16 seats) have a lot of clout because they have been crucial in propping up coalitions like Mr. Netanyahu’s. In return for their support, the governments — in recent decades most of them have been right-wing — have put aside the issue of Haredi military service. That was the plan, once again, for the next Knesset.

Then one person decided to ruin the plan. Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, represents mostly voters of Russian and Eastern European origin. His voters, like him, are on the right. They are also secular and don’t have much love for the ultra-Orthodox parties and their political power to institute religiously coercive policies.

For years, Yisrael Beiteinu and the Haredi parties were in an uneasy alliance, along with the Likud party. No longer. During the last few weeks of negotiation over forming the new government, Mr. Lieberman has decided to insist on passing a version of a bill on military service that the Haredi parties oppose.

Mr. Lieberman is known to be cunning, so many Israelis suspect that his real motivations are hidden — maybe a personal vendetta against Mr. Netanyahu or a cynical ploy to gain more seats in the Knesset in a new election. But sometimes it is useful to take politicians at face value: Mr. Lieberman, who was defense minister when that bill was written, is committed to passing it and sees no reason make it acceptable to Haredi parties.

But why he is doing this now, rather than during the last government, may have to do with larger changes to Israel’s political landscape, in particular the opportunity to redraw the map of political rivalries.

For many years, the left has been the usual punching bag for right-wing politicians who wanted to galvanize their base. The truth is that leftists, known in Hebrew as smolanim, are disliked by most of the Israeli public. They are associated with a failed peace process, with weaker security policies, with naïveté. In Israeli politics, “smolani” is often synonymous with untrustworthy and unpatriotic.

That trick is getting old. The Israeli left is defeated and marginalized. The public long ago moved rightward. The last election was predominantly fought between Likud and an upstart center-center-right party called Blue and White. The old parties of the left collectively took only 10 seats. Yes, “smolani” is still hurled as an insult at potential rivals, but with less passion. The right dislikes leftists — but there is not much left to dislike.

Maybe this is why Mr. Lieberman has decided to shift gears and go after the Haredi parties.

In fact, the Haredim are even more disliked than leftists: According to polling from the Jewish People Policy Institute, where I work, just 20 percent of Jewish Israelis say that they make a “very positive contribution” to Israel, while almost half say their contribution to Israel is “negative.”

Haredim are disliked not only because they don’t serve in the military and because their politicians hold the government coalition hostage, but also because their participation in the work force is low and they pay less in taxes than other communities. And, of course, because they are different. They wear black hats and live in segregated neighborhoods, and seem radical, outdated and sometimes just plain weird.

Speaking on Tuesday, Mr. Lieberman said: “I am not against the ultra-Orthodox public. I am for the State of Israel.” He added, “I am for a Jewish state but against a religiously coercive state.” As he tries to convince voters that he has stymied coalition talks out of principle, not self-interest, he is now bringing up other issues that relate to the ultra-Orthodox beyond military service: closing stores on the Sabbath, Haredi boycotts of factories that operate on the Sabbath and the rabbinical use of DNA tests to verify the Jewishness of Russian immigrants, and more. These are precisely the policy areas where the Haredim have exercised their political power — and where they are unpopular with much of the public.

By sabotaging a right-Haredi coalition and prompting a new election, Mr. Lieberman is presenting voters on the right with a question: Whom do they dislike more, the smolanim or the Haredim? Mr. Netanyahu’s bet is on the old fight, against the left; Mr. Lieberman decided to bet on a political fight against the ultra-Orthodox.

He might be on to something. There’s no reason for Israelis to worry about the left anymore. But there is good reason to be concerned about how the ultra-Orthodox can misuse their power. The time has come for someone with political clout to make that point and to try to rein in the ultra-Orthodox pull on Israeli public life and politics. It remains to be seen if it’s a winning political strategy.

Shmuel Rosner is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer. @rosnersdomain

In Defeat for Netanyahu, Israel Moves to Hold New Election

May 29, 2019

Opinion | Shmuel Rosner

Why Israel Still Loves Netanyahu

April 10, 2019

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/opinion/israel-election-coalition-lieberman.html

2019-05-30 08:15:26Z
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Opinion | Why Is Israel Going to Have Another Election? - The New York Times

TEL AVIV — In early April, Benjamin Netanyahu won an election that was supposed to send him to an unprecedented 11th consecutive year as Israel’s prime minister. There was only one small obstacle in his way: forming a government.

The day after the election I predicted that “the coalition that he forms will probably have little more than the minimum 61 seats behind it.” I was wrong by one. Mr. Netanyahu was able to bring together 60 seats out of the Knesset’s 120 — and not a single one more.

At midnight on Wednesday, his deadline to form a government expired. He has only one, costly option now: sending Israeli voters back to the polls and starting over. It looks as if we’ll be voting again in mid-September.

How did this happen?

To really understand it, you have to go back many decades.

In Israel, all citizens are supposed to serve in the military or perform another type of national service. But one group has been relieved of this duty since the state was established: the ultra-Orthodox, known here as Haredim, who make up about 10 percent of the population. Thanks to their high birthrate, the Haredim double in number every 10 to 15 years. When deferment began in 1948 there were about 400 Haredim eligible for it. Today there are more than 50,000. According to Israel’s bureau of statistics, as much as a third of Israel’s population will be Haredi by 2065.

Young Haredi men study the Torah instead of wearing a uniform. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a vast majority of Israelis believe this is unfair.

The Supreme Court doesn’t like the arrangement either. In 2017, the court declared it unconstitutional and demanded new legislation that could withstand judicial review. Since then, the court agreed to grant the government a few postponements, but now the deadline is near. The new government, when formed, must pass a new law to continue the Haredim’s national service exemption. If it fails to do so, the court could decide that the arrangement is void, and prompt a political and social crisis by in essence ordering the state to draft many thousands of reluctant, disobedient, Haredim.

And here’s the problem. The political parties representing the ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset (currently, with 16 seats) have a lot of clout because they have been crucial in propping up coalitions like Mr. Netanyahu’s. In return for their support, the governments — in recent decades most of them have been right-wing — have put aside the issue of Haredi military service. That was the plan, once again, for the next Knesset.

Then one person decided to ruin the plan. Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, represents mostly voters of Russian and Eastern European origin. His voters, like him, are on the right. They are also secular and don’t have much love for the ultra-Orthodox parties and their political power to institute religiously coercive policies.

For years, Yisrael Beiteinu and the Haredi parties were in an uneasy alliance, along with the Likud party. No longer. During the last few weeks of negotiation over forming the new government, Mr. Lieberman has decided to insist on passing a version of a bill on military service that the Haredi parties oppose.

Mr. Lieberman is known to be cunning, so many Israelis suspect that his real motivations are hidden — maybe a personal vendetta against Mr. Netanyahu or a cynical ploy to gain more seats in the Knesset in a new election. But sometimes it is useful to take politicians at face value: Mr. Lieberman, who was defense minister when that bill was written, is committed to passing it and sees no reason make it acceptable to Haredi parties.

But why he is doing this now, rather than during the last government, may have to do with larger changes to Israel’s political landscape, in particular the opportunity to redraw the map of political rivalries.

For many years, the left has been the usual punching bag for right-wing politicians who wanted to galvanize their base. The truth is that leftists, known in Hebrew as smolanim, are disliked by most of the Israeli public. They are associated with a failed peace process, with weaker security policies, with naïveté. In Israeli politics, “smolani” is often synonymous with untrustworthy and unpatriotic.

That trick is getting old. The Israeli left is defeated and marginalized. The public long ago moved rightward. The last election was predominantly fought between Likud and an upstart center-center-right party called Blue and White. The old parties of the left collectively took only 10 seats. Yes, “smolani” is still hurled as an insult at potential rivals, but with less passion. The right dislikes leftists — but there is not much left to dislike.

Maybe this is why Mr. Lieberman has decided to shift gears and go after the Haredi parties.

In fact, the Haredim are even more disliked than leftists: According to polling from the Jewish People Policy Institute, where I work, just 20 percent of Jewish Israelis say that they make a “very positive contribution” to Israel, while almost half say their contribution to Israel is “negative.”

Haredim are disliked not only because they don’t serve in the military and because their politicians hold the government coalition hostage, but also because their participation in the work force is low and they pay less in taxes than other communities. And, of course, because they are different. They wear black hats and live in segregated neighborhoods, and seem radical, outdated and sometimes just plain weird.

Speaking on Tuesday, Mr. Lieberman said: “I am not against the ultra-Orthodox public. I am for the State of Israel.” He added, “I am for a Jewish state but against a religiously coercive state.” As he tries to convince voters that he has stymied coalition talks out of principle, not self-interest, he is now bringing up other issues that relate to the ultra-Orthodox beyond military service: closing stores on the Sabbath, Haredi boycotts of factories that operate on the Sabbath and the rabbinical use of DNA tests to verify the Jewishness of Russian immigrants, and more. These are precisely the policy areas where the Haredim have exercised their political power — and where they are unpopular with much of the public.

By sabotaging a right-Haredi coalition and prompting a new election, Mr. Lieberman is presenting voters on the right with a question: Whom do they dislike more, the smolanim or the Haredim? Mr. Netanyahu’s bet is on the old fight, against the left; Mr. Lieberman decided to bet on a political fight against the ultra-Orthodox.

He might be on to something. There’s no reason for Israelis to worry about the left anymore. But there is good reason to be concerned about how the ultra-Orthodox can misuse their power. The time has come for someone with political clout to make that point and to try to rein in the ultra-Orthodox pull on Israeli public life and politics. It remains to be seen if it’s a winning political strategy.

Shmuel Rosner is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer. @rosnersdomain

In Defeat for Netanyahu, Israel Moves to Hold New Election

May 29, 2019

Opinion | Shmuel Rosner

Why Israel Still Loves Netanyahu

April 10, 2019

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/opinion/israel-election-coalition-lieberman.html

2019-05-30 08:08:23Z
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Boris Johnson Is Ordered To Face Accusations That He Lied To The Public - NPR

Enlarge this image

Boris Johnson must appear in court to face accusations that he lied to the public about the costs of being in the European Union. He's seen here on Monday, arriving at his girlfriend's home in London. Peter Summers/Getty Images hide caption

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Peter Summers/Getty Images

A British court is ordering Boris Johnson to face accusations that while holding public office, he lied in order to sway voter opinion on Brexit. The case was brought by a "private prosecutor" who says Johnson abused the public's trust while holding official posts.

Johnson has quickly emerged as a front-runner to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, who is resigning next month. But with today's ruling, he must also face charges of misconduct in public office. The case was brought by Marcus Ball — who has raised more than $300,000 to fund his effort.

Ball says Johnson is guilty of "misleading the public by endorsing and making statements about the cost of European Union Membership, which he knew to be false."

Johnson is currently a member of Parliament. He resigned as the U.K's foreign secretary last summer, in a protest against May's plans to leave the European Union. He has also served as London's mayor.

Johnson has repeatedly made the false claim that Britain paid £350 million each week to be in the European Union. The claim was famously touted on a Vote Leave campaign bus during the run-up to the Brexit vote.

In 2017, the head of the U.K.'s Statistics Authority sent Johnson a letter expressing his disappointment and telling Johnson it was "a clear misuse of official statistics" to say leaving the EU would free up £350 million (more than $440 million) weekly to spend on national healthcare.

In 2018, Johnson acknowledged that the figure was inaccurate — but he said it was "grossly underestimated."

On his crowdfunding page, Ball stresses that he's not trying to stop Brexit from happening. Instead, he's targeting what he sees as the real threat facing society: lying, particularly the falsehoods that flow from those in power.

"Lying in politics is the biggest problem. It is far more important than Brexit and certainly a great deal older," Ball wrote. "Historically speaking, lying in politics has assisted in starting wars, misleading voters and destroying public trust in the systems of democracy and government."

He added, "When politicians lie, democracy dies."

Ball says he wants to set a precedent by making it illegal for an elected official to lie about financial matters. If he's successful, he says, the case could have a wide ripple effect.

"Because of how the English common law works it's possible that such a precedent could be internationally persuasive by influencing the law in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and India."

In Britain's legal system, private prosecutions can be started by any person or company with the time and money to do so.

As the London-based law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon (which was once involved in Ball's case) states, "Other than the fact the prosecution is brought by a private individual or company, for all other purposes they proceed in exactly the same way as if the prosecution had been brought by the Crown."

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https://www.npr.org/2019/05/29/727832275/boris-johnson-is-ordered-to-face-accusations-that-he-lied-to-the-public

2019-05-29 13:18:00Z
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Bolton looks on as Trump undercuts him in public - Editors Choice

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv29Y_Z9WQ

2019-05-29 13:26:15Z
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