Amid crisis, Greece orders islands to slow migrant traffic

NASA’s first and only yearlong spaceman will go through a series of physical and medical tests as soon as he returns from the International Space Station in a few days. Only 437 migrants arrived in the continental port city of Piraeus on Saturday, in comparison to up to 4,000 daily arrivals previously.

The European Union’s once-tight unity is being rapidly eroded as hundreds of thousands of migrants walk a well-trodden path through the Balkans and into the bloc’s heartland.

About 20,000 migrants were in Greece on Thursday, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said.

Macedonian police had only allowed some 150 people to cross since Thursday, Greek police said. Others managed to find taxis to the Idomeni border crossing, where about 2,800 people were waiting, some for up to four days.

Austria, the last stop on the way to Germany for hundreds of thousands of migrants, recently imposed restrictions on its borders, setting it off a domino effect limiting the flow of people and leaving hundreds stranded in Greece.

Amnesty International hit out Wednesday at Europe’s “shameful” response, saying most European Union countries had “simply decided that the protection of their borders is more important than the protection of the rights of refugees”. But to those on the road – and to Greece, a financially struggling nation with a lengthy seacoast that is impossible to seal – who is responsible for the border restrictions nearly doesn’t matter.

But the ringfencing is already happening, as Austria and the Balkan countries over the past week have coordinated a tightening of their borders and started to send back Afghan migrants, resulting in more than 10,000 people being stuck in Greece.

The change could well lead to further pressures in Greece and elsewhere along the main Balkan route that the migrants have been taking. However, the fact is that the refugees have not understood that their entry would be resented by the local population and they would be really made to live like second class or third class citizens for long time to come.

“My only hope is to live in a safe place. I was born in war”. Police said the men, who were rushed to hospital, one unconscious, had tried to draw attention to their predicament.

Up to 6,000 migrants and refugees have amassed in Idomeni camps on the Greek side of the border awaiting permission to enter a neutral zone on their way to Macedonia, Greek media reported Saturday.

A young mother named Huda says she fears she will lose her five year-old autistic son among the packed crowds in the passenger terminal. She would not give her last name to protect those she left behind.

Suddenly, Afghans appear to be the new pariahs of Europe. The difference is accounted for by factors such as people being registered twice, going home, going to relatives or continuing on to other countries in Scandinavia and elsewhere. “Why can Syrians and Iraqis pass but not us?”

“We are facing a humanitarian crisis that the others provoked”.

Refugees carry their children through a national motorway towards the Greek-Macedonian border near the Greek town of Polykastro after ignoring warnings from Greek authorities that the border is shut. It said its ambassador was recalled for “consultations”.

Greece’s minister responsible for migration, Ioannis Mouzalas, had harsh words as he arrived for a Thursday migration meeting in Brussels.

In a veiled reference to the division among European Union countries, Schaeuble told the G20 meeting in Shanghai that Greece had not been shown “excessive” solidarity by other states except for Germany.

Stoltenberg said that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will be there in a “support role” and the alliance’s “added value” is that it “can facilitate closer cooperation and assist in greater exchange of information between Greece and Turkey”. “Then we do not have to face such challenges”.

Many of his friends were already talking to smugglers, but not him.

The FBI director says the policy issues raised in the Justice Department’s dispute with Apple Inc. over a locked iPhone represent the “hardest question I’ve seen in government”.