World
How (and when) to watch King Charles' coronation in the US
King Charles III's coronation Saturday will mix a thousand-year tradition with the streaming age.
The pomp and ceremony will be unmissable for U.K. residents, but what about royal watchers across the Atlantic? There are plenty of options to watch the regalia-heavy event that serves as a formal confirmation of King Charles' dual role as head of state and titular leader of the Church of England — for those willing to wake up early enough.
While it might seem odd that Americans might want to tune in, there have been large audiences for previous royal milestones, such as the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 and the weddings of their children, William and Harry.
The longevity of the king's mother, Queen Elizabeth II, means that many people alive have never seen a coronation.
Also read: King’s coronation draws apathy, criticism in former colonies
WHAT TIME DOES THE CORONATION START?
Well, first King Charles and his wife Camilla have to get to the ceremony. That begins with a procession to Westminster Abbey, which will get started at about 5 a.m. EDT, 2 a.m. for West Coasters.
The Associated Press will livestream the procession beginning at 5 a.m. Eastern and provide ongoing coverage throughout the day on www.apnews.com.
Broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC as well as cable channels CNN and Fox News all plan live coverage starting at 5 a.m. EDT. The outlets will also feature coverage on their digital platforms and streaming like Hulu+ Live TV.
WHAT SHOULD I KNOW AHEAD OF TIME?
The day will be filled with pageantry — the handing over of a rod, sceptre and orb, all medieval symbols of power — and loads of other traditions. Despite that, Charles has slimmed down the event, shortening the procession route and the Westminster Abbey ceremony.
More than 100 heads of state will be in the audience, but President Joe Biden will keep with U.S. tradition and not attend. Instead, first lady Jill Biden will be there.
The celebration continues on Sunday with the Coronation Concert, but U.S. audiences won't be able to watch headliners Lionel Richie and Katy Perry. That will be shown on BBC's iPlayer, which isn't available outside the U.K.
Royal Drama: King’s fractious family on stage at coronation
King Charles III lives in a palace, travels in a chauffeur-driven Bentley and is one of Britain’s richest men, but he's similar to many of his subjects in one very basic way: His family life is complicated — very complicated.
There’s a second wife, an embarrassing brother, and an angry son and daughter-in-law, all with allies who aren’t shy about whispering family secrets in the ears of friendly reporters.
The new king will hope to keep a lid on those tensions when his royally blended family joins as many as 2,800 guests for Charles' coronation on May 6 at Westminster Abbey. All except Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, are attending.
How Charles manages his family drama over the coming weeks and years is crucial to the king’s efforts to preserve and protect the 1,000-year-old hereditary monarchy he now embodies. Without the respect of the public, the House of Windsor risks being lumped together with pop stars, social media influencers and reality TV contestants as fodder for the British tabloids, undermining the cachet that underpins its role in public life.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers says people should look past the sensational headlines and focus on what Charles accomplishes now that he is king.
Also read: King’s coronation draws apathy, criticism in former colonies
“In a sense, he sort of becomes a new man when he becomes king,” said Vickers, author of “Coronation: The Crowning of Elizabeth II.”
“Look at him as he is now, look at him the way he is approaching everything, look at his positivity and look at how right he’s been on so many issues,” he added. “Unfortunately, he had those difficult times with his marriages and some of the other issues, but we live in a very tricky era.”
The horror show came back to haunt Charles last week, when the king’s estranged younger son, Prince Harry, dropped a new round of allegations Tuesday about the royal family into the middle of the coronation buildup.
In written evidence for his invasion of privacy claim against a British newspaper, Harry claimed his father prevented him from filing the lawsuit a decade ago. The prince said Charles didn’t want to dredge up graphic testimony about his extramarital affair with the former Camilla Parker-Bowles when he was married to the late Princess Diana.
Diana was the mother of Harry and his elder brother and heir to the throne, William, the Prince of Wales. Camilla, now the queen consort, went on to marry Charles in 2005 and will be crowned alongside her husband at Westminster Abbey.
If the past is any indication, attention will now shift to body language, seating plans and even wardrobe choices during the coronation, as royal watchers look for any signs of a thaw in the family tensions.
But Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, doesn’t expect Harry to have a lot of contact with the rest of his family. In any case, Harry won’t be in the U.K. for long, so there’s not much time for fence mending.
"The stuff that we discovered (Tuesday) is really not going to help his cause,” Little said. “But, you know, will there be time to go over all that with the king and the Prince of Wales? Unlikely.”
The royal soap opera didn’t begin with the current generation of royals. After all, Edward VIII sparked a constitutional crisis in 1936 when he abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson.
Charles’ grandfather, George VI, is credited with saving the monarchy with a life of low-key public service after he replaced his flamboyant elder brother. The late Queen Elizabeth II burnished the family’s reputation during a 70-year reign, in which she became a symbol of stability who cheered the nation’s victories and comforted it during darker times.
But Charles grew up in a different era, under the glare of media attention as deference to the monarchy faded.
He has been a controversial figure ever since the very public breakdown of his marriage to Diana, who was revered by many people for her looks and her compassion.
Diana alleged that there had been “three people” in the marriage, pointing the finger at Charles’ longtime love Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Camilla, initially reviled by Diana’s fans, has worked hard to rehabilitate her image. Her ex-husband and their children are expected to attend the coronation, with her grandsons serving as pages of honor.
She supports a raft of causes, ranging from adult literacy to protecting the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. But even that effort has sparked tensions.
Harry claimed in his memoir “Spare” that the senior royals leaked unflattering stories about him to the news media in return for more favorable coverage, particularly to improve Camilla's image.
At the time of their marriage in 2018, Harry and Meghan were celebrated as the new face of the monarchy. Meghan, a biracial American actress, brought a touch of Hollywood glamour to the royal family and many observers hoped she would help the Windsors connect with younger people in an increasingly multicultural nation.
Those hopes quickly crumbled amid allegations that palace officials were insensitive to Meghan’s mental health struggles as she adjusted to royal life.
Harry and Meghan walked away from frontline royal duties three years ago and moved to California, from which they have lobbed repeated critiques at the House of Windsor.
In a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey they hinted at racism in the palace, alleging that one unidentified member of the royal family had inquired about the color of their unborn son’s skin before his birth.
Harry, i n a Netflix series broadcast last year, said the episode was an example of unconscious bias and that the royal family needed to “learn and grow” so it could be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”
The repeated attacks led to months of speculation about whether the couple would be invited to the coronation. The palace finally answered that question two weeks ago when it announced that Harry would attend but Meghan would remain in California with their two children.
And then there is Charles' brother Prince Andrew, who became a toxic time bomb inside the royal family when the world learned about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the financier's long-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes in 2008, died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on a second set of charges. Maxwell was convicted last year of helping procure young girls for Epstein and is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Florida.
Andrew gave up his royal duties in 2019 after a disastrous interview with the BBC in which he tried to explain away his links to Epstein and Maxwell. He was stripped of his honorary military titles and patronages as he prepared to defend a civil lawsuit filed by a woman who said she was forced to have sex with the prince when she was a teenager.
Andrew denied the allegations but settled the suit last year before it came to trial. While terms of the agreement weren’t released, The Sun newspaper reported that Charles and the late queen paid the bulk of the estimated 7 million pound ($8.7 million) settlement.
“I think it was inevitable that when Charles became king, a lot of the personal stuff would come back to haunt him,″ Little said. “I think as far as the king is concerned, he just has to shrug his shoulders and get on with the job in hand.”
UN: South Sudan struggling to implement power-sharing deal
South Sudan is facing violent clashes and increasing disillusionment and frustration as it struggles to implement the most challenging provisions of a fragile 2018 power-sharing agreement, U.N. experts say in a new report.
The world's newest nation is struggling to integrate rival military forces, draft a new constitution and prepare for its first election as an independent country in December 2024, the experts monitoring sanctions against the world’s newest nation said in a report to the U.N. Security Council obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
The country's stability “will likely turn on the government’s ability to reward the patience of those who remain committed to peace, rather than those who have sought to reshape it through violence," the report says.
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir, battled those loyal to the current vice president, Riek Machar.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the war, which ended with the 2018 peace agreement, bringing Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February 2023, but last August they were postponed until December 2024.
Kiir said he wanted to avoid creating conditions for more bloodshed. He issued a statement outlining the government’s achievements and stressing that it would be “business as usual” before the elections.
Also read: 675 Bangladeshis reach Port Sudan to leave crisis-hit Sudan: Shahriar Alam
The U.N. experts said the message was aimed at allaying two concerns — that the extension would be used to undermine the fragile power-sharing structures and would mean further delays, “not the progress that peace once promised.”
On the plus side, the panel said in the 37-page report that the unity government has survived, a series of laws have started to pave the way for the drafting of a new constitution, and a first batch of approximately 55,000 unified troops has graduated, even though most haven’t been deployed.
On the negative side, the experts said, most troops that graduated remain around their training centers, “though poor conditions have led to hundreds of deaths and thousands of desertions.” Many graduates don’t receive regular salaries, and most work in local communities to make money, the experts said.
Those that have been deployed appear to have joined pre-existing military units rather than becoming part of a new national force, they said. While the parties agreed last year to unify the top command structure, they have not been able to reach a similar agreement for the lower ranks.
South Sudan is also facing its highest level of displacement since the peace agreement, and more than two-thirds of the population needs humanitarian assistance, the panel said.
The experts said most South Sudanese have not seen “tangible progress” since the 2018 agreement was signed.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation is partly the result of violence and serious clashes in most parts of the country between well-armed rival forces, leading to deaths, people fleeing their homes, serious human rights violations, including sexual attacks, and difficulties delivering aid, the panel said.
Much of the violence results from efforts to weaken opponents, but increasingly “from growing dissatisfaction with the political process in Juba," the capital.
Oil accounts for more than 90% of the government’s revenue and almost all its exports, and as a result of the high oil price the government is likely to exceed its budget target of $1.6 billion in gross oil revenues for the current fiscal year, the experts said, but the money has largely failed to reach institutions that could help stabilize the country.
“The misappropriation and diversion of public resources not only continues to fuel political competition but also deprives the treasury of the resources needed to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, fund the implementation of the peace agreement, and stabilize the country through regular salary payments and development,” the panel said.
US adds a solid 253,000 jobs despite Fed's rate hikes
America’s employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.
The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. The jobless rate fell in part, though, because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed.
In its report Friday, the government noted that while hiring was solid in April, it was much weaker in February and March than it had previously estimated. Job gains for those months was downgraded by a combined 149,000. And hourly wages rose last month at the fastest pace since July, which may alarm the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.
April’s hiring gain compares with 165,000 in March and 248,000 in February and is still at a level considered vigorous by historical standards. The job market has remained durable despite the Fed’s aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes over the past year to fight inflation. Layoffs are still relatively low, job openings comparatively high.
Job growth was particularly strong last month among health care companies, restaurants and bars and a broad category that includes managers, administrators and technical support workers.
In one sign of the benefits of a consistently tight job market, Black unemployment dipped in April to 4.7% — the lowest such level in government records dating to 1972.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself sounded somewhat mystified this week by the job market’s durability. He and other Fed officials have expressed concern that a robust job market exerts upward pressure on wages and prices. They hope to achieve a so-called soft landing — cooling the economy and the labor market just enough to tame inflation yet not so much as to trigger a recession. Most economists doubt that the Fed will succeed and expect a recession to begin sometime this year.
Last month, the proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one — the so-called labor force participation rate — was unchanged at 62.6%. The Fed would like to see labor participation grow: More people in the job market would likely put downward pressure on pay growth and help contain inflation.
Average hourly wages rose by 0.5% from March to April, nearly twice what economists had expected.
“Wage pressures on inflation are proving persistent,’’ Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, wrote in a research note. “And with the participation rate failing to improve, this jobs report will not convince the Fed that they are on top of inflation.”
The ever-higher borrowing costs the Fed has engineered have weakened some key sectors of the economy, notably the housing market. Pounded by higher mortgage rates, sales of existing homes were down a sharp 22% in March from a year earlier. Investment in housing has cratered over the past year.
America’s factories are slumping, too. An index produced by the Institute for Supply Management, an organization of purchasing managers, has signaled a contraction in manufacturing for six straight months.
Even consumers, who drive about 70% of economic activity and who have been spending healthily since the pandemic recession ended three years ago, are showing signs of exhaustion: Retail sales fell in February and March after having begun the year with a bang.
The Fed’s rate hikes — 10 consecutive increases since March 2022 — are hardly the economy’s only serious threat. Congressional Republicans are threatening to let the federal government default on its debt, by refusing to raise the limit on what it can borrow, if Democrats don’t accept sharp cuts in federal spending. A first-ever default on the federal debt would shatter the market for U.S. Treasurys — the world’s biggest — and possibly cause an international financial crisis.
The global backdrop already looks gloomier. The International Monetary Fund last month downgraded its forecast for worldwide growth, citing rising interest rates around the world, financial uncertainty and chronic inflation.
Since March, America’s financial system has been rattled by three of the four biggest bank failures in U.S. history. Worried that jittery depositors will withdraw their money, banks are likely to reduce lending to conserve cash. Multiplied across the banking industry, that trend could cause a credit crunch that would hobble the economy.
WHO downgrades COVID pandemic, says it's no longer emergency
The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed at least 7 million people worldwide.
WHO first declared COVID-19 to be an emergency more than three years ago. The U.N. health agency's officials said that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic hasn't come to an end, noting recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
WHO says that thousands of people are dying from the virus every week, and millions of others report that they are still suffering from debilitating, long-term effects from the disease.
“It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he said, adding he wouldn't hesitate to reconvene experts to reassess the situation should COVID-19 “put our world in peril.”
Tedros said the pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, acknowledging that most countries have already returned to life before COVID-19.
He bemoaned the damage that COVID-19 had done to the global community, saying the pandemic had shattered businesses, exacerbated political divisions, led to the spread of misinformation and plunged millions into poverty. Tedros also noted that there were likely at least 20 million COVID-19 deaths, far more than the officially reported 7 million.“COVID has changed our world and it has changed us,” he said, warning that the risk of new variants still remained.
Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO's emergencies chief, said it was incumbent on heads of states and other leaders to decide on how future health threats should be faced, given the numerous problems that crippled the world's response to COVID-19. Countries are negotiating a pandemic treaty that some hope may spell out how future disease threats will be faced — but it's unlikely any such treaty would be legally binding.
When the U.N. health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on Jan. 30, 2020, it hadn't yet been named COVID-19 and there were no major outbreaks beyond China.
More than three years later, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.
In the U.S., the public health emergency declaration made regarding COVID-19 is set to expire on May 11, when wide-ranging measures to support the pandemic response, including vaccine mandates, will end. Many other countries, including Germany, France and Britain, dropped many of their provisions against the pandemic last year.
When Tedros declared COVID-19 to be an emergency in 2020, he said his greatest fear was the virus’ potential to spread in countries with weak health systems.
In fact, some of the countries that suffered the worst COVID-19 death tolls were previously judged to be the best-prepared for a pandemic, including the U.S. and Britain. According to WHO data, the number of deaths reported in Africa account for just 3% of the global total.
WHO doesn't “declare” pandemics, but first used the term to describe the outbreak in March 2020, when the virus had spread to every continent except Antarctica, long after many other scientists had said a pandemic was already underway.
WHO is the only agency mandated to coordinate the world’s response to acute health threats, but the organization faltered repeatedly as the coronavirus unfolded.
In January 2020, WHO publicly applauded China for its supposed speedy and transparent response, even though recordings of private meetings obtained by The Associated Press showed top officials were frustrated at the country’s lack of cooperation.
WHO also recommended against mask-wearing for the public for months, a mistake many health officials say cost lives.
Numerous scientists also slammed WHO’s reluctance to acknowledge that COVID-19 was frequently spread in the air and by people without symptoms, criticizing the agency’s lack of strong guidance to prevent such exposure.
Tedros was a vociferous critic of rich countries who hoarded the limited supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, warning that the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” by failing to share shots with poor countries.
Most recently, WHO has been struggling to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, a challenging scientific endeavour that has also become politically fraught.
After a weeks-long visit to China, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most likely jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility that it originated in a lab as “extremely unlikely.”
But the U.N. agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing and that it was premature to rule out that COVID-19 might have ties to a lab.
Tedros lamented that the catastrophic toll of COVID-19 could have been avoided.
"We have the tools and the technologies to prepare for pandemics better, to detect them earlier, to respond to them faster,” Tedros said, without citing missteps by WHO specifically.
“A lack of (global) solidarity meant that those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been,” he said. “Lives were lost that should not have been. We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.”
Liverpool to mark coronation, notes 'strong views' of fans
Liverpool will play the national anthem before the start of its Premier League game on Saturday to mark the coronation of King Charles III and acknowledged Friday that “some supporters have strong views on it.”
The team said it would play “God Save the King” after the league had contacted clubs playing home games and “strongly suggested” they note the historic occasion.
Liverpool supporters booed the national anthem — which was formerly “God Save the Queen” — when it was played ahead of the FA Cup final a year ago and the Community Shield in July because of what is perceived to be a long-held opposition toward the establishment.
Queen Elizabeth II held the throne for seven decades until her death in September at the age of 96.
Liverpool fans booed the national anthem in the 1980s and during what some refer to as the “managed decline” of the city during the tenure of the Conservative Party-led government. Deepening those feelings were the actions of the government following the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, and many from the left-leaning city continue to feel let down by the state.
Liverpool hosts Brentford at Anfield on Saturday afternoon. The club tucked its plans into an announcement that also discussed charity initiatives and support of the city of Liverpool hosting the Eurovision Song Contest.
“Just over a week ago, the Premier League contacted all home clubs and strongly suggested to mark this historic occasion across home matches this weekend and provided a list of activity for clubs to get involved in,” Liverpool said on its website.
Before kickoff, “players and officials will congregate around the center circle when the national anthem will be played,” the club said. “It is, of course, a personal choice how those at Anfield on Saturday mark this occasion and we know some supporters have strong views on it.”
During Wednesday's 1-0 win over Fulham at Anfield, fans in the Kop voiced their disapproval of the coronation using explicit song lyrics.
“The club’s position is my position,” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said Friday at his pre-match news conference. “This is definitely a subject which I cannot really have a proper opinion about. I'm from Germany, we don't have a king or a queen. I'm 55 years old, have really no experience with that.”
Royal weddings are “massive things in Germany,” he added, likening it to watching a movie.
“I'm pretty sure a lot of people in this country will enjoy the coronation, some will maybe not really be interested and some will not like it,” Klopp said.
Jill Biden in UK for King Charles' coronation, visits No. 10
Jill Biden has celebrated the athletic grit of wounded service members with Prince Harry, discussed the value of early childhood education with Princess Kate and sipped tea poured by Queen Elizabeth II.
Now the first lady is back in London for another royal engagement. President Joe Biden has dispatched his wife to represent the United States at Saturday's coronation of King Charles III, the late queen's eldest son. No American president has ever attended a British coronation.
While in London, she's engaging in a bit of soft diplomacy before the big event. Her first stop in Friday's drizzle was a familiar place: No. 10 Downing St., for her first meeting with Akshata Murty, the wife of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Murty greeted Biden with an embrace and a kiss on each cheek. “Welcome, welcome!” she said, before turning to shake hands with Finnegan Biden, one of the first lady's granddaughters.
Afterward, Jill Biden and Murty met at the Downing Street residence with military veterans and their families participating in a health and wellness program.
The sun had come out by the time the pair arrived at the cafeteria at Charles Dickens Primary School in the Borough area of London to meet with students who were wearing golden paper crowns as they participated in coronation-related activities. She told them to “have fun tomorrow.”
The first lady will also visit the U.S. Embassy to greet staff before ending her day at a reception the king is hosting at Buckingham Palace.
On Saturday, Jill Biden will represent the United States at the coronation at Westminster Abbey, seated among several hundred heads of state, royals from other nations and other guests who were invited to watch Charles and his wife, Camilla, be crowned king and queen. Afterward, she will attend a reception hosted by U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley.
Jill Biden will also mingle at a luncheon Sunday hosted by Sunak and Murty at their Downing Street residence before her flight back to Washington.
President Biden has received some criticism for skipping the coronation, though the White House cites the precedent of a U.S. president never attending for his decision.
But the president and Charles are hardly strangers. They have chatted each other up at global climate events since Biden took office, and during the queen's funeral last year. They also spoke in April when Biden called to say he was sending the first lady to the coronation, and the president expressed interest in meeting with the king in the United Kingdom at a future date, the White House said at the time.
First ladies often stand in for presidents when they can't be present.
“I love seeing the first lady as our representative and I would have been thrilled for any first lady to attend,” said Lindsay Reynolds, who was first lady Melania Trump's White House chief of staff. “I don't think it is a slight in any way for the president to not be attending.”
Jill Biden was just 2 years old when Charles' mother, Elizabeth, was crowned in June 1953. The queen held the throne for seven decades until her death last September at age 96.
The first lady tweeted before her flight Thursday that "it's an honor to represent the United States for this historic moment and celebrate the special relationship between our countries.”
Most modern-era first ladies, including Jill Biden, have engaged with members of the British royal family because the late queen had met every American president since Eisenhower, except for Lyndon Johnson.
Biden was the 13th and final U.S. leader to meet the queen. They saw each other when he visited England in 2021 with his wife to participate in a Group of Seven world leader summit. At the time, the queen also invited the Bidens to have tea with her at Windsor Castle.
Jill Biden told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after the queen's death that sitting in her living room was like being with one's grandmother.
“And she said, ‘Let me pour the tea,’ and we said, ‘No, no, let us help,’ and she said ‘Oh, no, no, no, I’ll get this. You sit down,’” the first lady said. “And it was just a very special moment with a very special woman.”
During that trip, she and Prince William's wife, Kate, met for the first time at a preschool in southwest England where they participated in a roundtable discussion on the role of early childhood education in life outcomes. They also learned about caring for bunny rabbits.
The first lady also has met William’s brother, Prince Harry, several times through their work and support of military veterans. She has joined Harry for the Invictus Games, an athletic competition he founded for wounded or sick military veterans.
Anti-Muslim Twitter feed in Spain: 'A recipe for disaster'
The person who operates the Twitter account claims to be an Islamic fundamentalist living in Spain, empathizing with violent extremists and longing for the days, more than six centuries ago, when Muslims ruled the country.
The views are as fake as the account, part of a loose and informal effort by far-right nationalists in Spain to use social media to stir up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fervor and to undermine faith in Spain's multicultural democracy. In some cases, they exploit Twitter's loose rules to spread hateful messages and threats of violence, while in others they pose as Muslims as a way to disparage actual followers of Islam.
By harnessing the power of social media to communicate, coordinate and evangelize, those behind the so-called Reconquista movement are relying on the same playbook used by far-right extremists in the U.S., Brazil and other countries who have used social media to expand their power and recruit new followers.
Reconquista also borrows the same rhetoric used by far-right groups in the U.S., and even some of the same online memes, including Pepe the Frog, a crudely drawn amphibian who has become a mascot for white supremacist and antigovernment groups in the U.S. In one Reconquista meme, Pepe is shown wearing the garb of a 16th century Spanish conquistador.
As in the U.S. and other countries, the Spanish nationalists have seized on debates over trans rights, spreading misleading claims about the exploitation of children and supposed conspiracies to eradicate the idea of gender. They've also criticized COVID-19 vaccines, feminism, efforts to address climate change and support for Ukraine following Russia's invasion.
The remarkable overlap of tactics and interests isn't a coincidence, but reflects how far-right groups in many countries are learning from one another, copying each other's successes, said Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the Princeton, N.J.-based Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, a group focused on identifying cyberthreats that published a report on Reconquista this week. The findings were first reported by The Associated Press.
“This is a recipe for disaster,” Finkelstein told the AP. ”All over the world we’re seeing different manifestations of the same kind of problem. The flags are all different, but it’s remarkable how similar the memes are.”
One concern, Finkelstein said, is that the rhetoric could lead to offline violence.
Reconquista takes its name from the successful effort by Christian leaders to reconquer vast parts of the Iberian peninsula from its Islamic rulers and expel Muslims during the Middle Ages. It's a term embraced by some on the far-right, who see their opposition to Islam and immigrants as a divinely ordained sequel of sorts to that bloody, centuries long conflict.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric from accounts linked to Reconquista soared after a Moroccan man attacked two Catholic churches in the southern city of Algeciras in January, killing a church officer and injuring a priest. The man, an unauthorized immigrant, is now jailed in the psychiatric ward of a Spanish prison awaiting the results of a judicial probe; authorities believe he acted alone.
Many of the violent threats against Muslims that spread on Twitter following the attack violated the platform’s rules, and in some cases the platform did act to remove the content or suspend the author. But often those behind the content simply created a new account days after they were suspended.
The far-right party Vox helped popularize Reconquista online, using the term repeatedly in Tweets ahead of the 2019 election. Vox, whose members express strongly anti-immigrant views, now holds 52 seats, or the third largest number, in Spain's 350-member lower legislative chamber. The party's Twitter account was briefly suspended in 2020 for accusing its critics of promoting pedophilia, and again in 2021 for inciting hatred against Muslims.
The party's leader, Santiago Abascal, has made several references to the Reconquista, as he did last year in a Tweet. “Today is the anniversary of the reconquest of Granada, an indelible memory of the day the recovery of the entire national territory was completed after eight centuries of Islamic invasion,” he wrote.
Supporters of La Reconquista often display Spanish flags in their profiles and some openly praise Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator whose rule ended more than 40 years ago. They often refer to Muslims as Moors, an outdated historical term for Muslims from North Africa. One uses a photo of ex-U.S. President Donald Trump as their profile picture.
“If loving Spain is very facha, well, I am very facha,” reads the Twitter bio of one supporter of La Reconquista, using a Spanish term for fascism.
“Reconquista style, but we won't only remove the moors but also those who opened their doors to them,” wrote another.
Spain has responded to the effort to rehabilitate Franco’s legacy by passing a law last year that made it a crime to glorify the dictator. In 2019 Franco’s body was exhumed from a tomb at a grandiose memorial complex built by the fascists. He was reburied in a nearby cemetery.
Far-right groups in several countries have sought to reshape public understanding of events like the holocaust, slavery and, more recently, the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. By ignoring the details of the historic Reconquista or Franco's dictatorship, La Reconquista seeks to legitimize its own anti-immigrant views as traditional Spanish values, according to Marc Esteve Del Valle, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who has studied Reconquista’s use of the internet.
In that sense, the internet isn't just a place where Reconquista supporters find each other and share information, but a method of shaping public opinion and politics.
“The social networks are tools to organize, to mobilize. It's where the movement lives,” Esteve Del Valle said.
Twitter has drastically reduced its staff focused on ferreting out misinformation, hate speech and extremist content since it was bought by Elon Musk. The company did not respond to messages seeking comment about La Reconquista.
In recent years a number of informally organized far-right groups have used social media in similar ways.
In Italy, an anti-vaccine group known as V_V (after the movie “V for Vendetta”) has used Telegram to threaten nurses, doctors and others involved in efforts to save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Germany, a similar group known as Querdenken used Facebook to encourage violence against vaccine supporters until it was kicked off the site. In Brazil, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro plotted on social media ahead of January's violent attack in Brasilia.
And in the U.S., social media played a critical role in spurring the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and is now being used by supporters of Trump in an effort to whitewash the events of that day.
Trump himself has helped build bridges between some of the groups, as when he praised the Spanish Vox Party during a video message played at a rally last year.
“We have to make sure that we protect our borders and do lots of very good conservative things,” Trump told the crowd. “Spain is a great country and we want to keep it a great country. So congratulations to Vox for so many great messages you get out to the people of Spain and the people of the world.”
Russia's Wagner boss threatens Bakhmut pullout in Ukraine
The owner of Russia’s Wagner military contractor threatened Friday to withdraw his troops next week from the protracted battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, accusing Moscow's military command of starving his forces of ammunition and causing them heavy losses.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy entrepreneur with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Wagner had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, Russia's major Victory Day holiday celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
It is not the first time Prigozhin has raged about ammunition shortages and blamed Russia’s military, with which he has long been in conflict. Known for his bluster, he has previously made unverifiable claims and threats he hasn’t carried out.
Prigozhin’s spokespeople also published a video of him Friday standing in front of about 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground and saying they are Wagner fighters who died on Thursday alone. He angrily demands ammunition from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin says, pointing at the bodies and swearing. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”
Wagner has spearheaded the struggle for control of Bakhmut, the longest — and likely bloodiest — battle of the war. More than eight months of fighting there is believed to have cost thousands of lives. A pullout by Wagner would be a huge blow to the Russian campaign.
For the Ukrainian side, Bakhmut has become an important symbol of resistance to Russia’s invasion. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says its loss could begin building international support for a deal that could require Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises.
Prigozhin's spat with the Russian military leadership dates back to Wagner’s creation less than 10 years ago. During the war in Ukraine, he has chastised Russia's top military officials, publicly accusing them of incompetence — behavior that is highly unusual in Russia’s tightly controlled political system.
One general Prigozhin actively criticized was fired, but other top officials he has lashed out at appear to have retained the Kremlin’s trust. In January, Putin put Gerasimov in charge of the Russian forces in Ukraine, a move some observers also interpreted as an attempt to cut Prigozhin down to size.
Prigozhin alleged Friday that Russia’s regular army was supposed to protect the flanks as Wagner troops pushed forward but is “barely holding on to them,” deploying “tens and rarely hundreds” of troops.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately comment on the claims, and it was not possible to independently verify them.
“Wagner ran out of resources to advance in early April, but we’re advancing despite the fact that the enemy’s resources outnumber ours fivefold,” Prigozhin’s statement said. “Because of the lack of ammunition, our losses are growing exponentially every day.”
Ukrainian officials were skeptical about Prigozhin’s claims of ammunition shortages. Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, Andrii Cherniak, told The Associated Press that Wagner’s forces had clearly failed in their goal of taking Bakhmut by May 9 and Prigozhin had made the statement to “justify their unsuccessful actions.”
Prigozhin has toured Russian prisons to recruit fighters, promising inmates pardons if they survive a half-year tour of front-line duty with Wagner. Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.
Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, has tactical military value for Moscow, though analysts say it won’t be decisive in the war’s outcome.
The city had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center. It is now a devastated ghost town.
Prigozhin’s statement said Wagner will be forced to pull out of Bakhmut on May 10 and have Russia’s regular army take over. He said his force hasn’t received enough artillery ammunition supplies from the Russian military since Monday, and blamed “jealous military bureaucrats.”
Western officials and analysts believe Russia has run low on ammunition as the 14-month conflict became bogged down in a war of attrition over the winter, with both sides resorting to long-range bombardments.
Prigozhin has already threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut once, in an interview with a Russian military blogger last week, if the situation with ammunition doesn't improve.
Asked by The AP about Prigozhin’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during his daily conference call with reporters that he had seen refences to it in the media but refused to comment further.
Also Friday, an oil refinery in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region which borders the annexed Crimean Peninsula briefly caught fire after it was attacked by a drone, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials. The fire was small and was quickly put out, the report said.
It was the second straight day that the Ilyinsky refinery had came under a drone attack. Drone attacks on oil facilities in Russian regions on the border with Ukraine have been reported almost daily over the past week.
China, Russia foreign ministers among group meeting in India
Foreign ministers from a group of nations led by China and Russia met Friday in the Indian coastal resort state of Goa, where they were expected to discuss regional security, combating terrorism and deepening economic and cultural ties.
India's Foreign Minister Subhramanyam Jaishankar in opening remarks to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a group that includes China, Russia and several other Asian countries — criticized global institutions' response to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to resolve geopolitical upheaval, saying that alternative forums like the SCO have an opportunity to help address such challenges.
He said the developments have disrupted global supply chains, especially in energy, food and fertilizer, and hit developing nations the hardest.
“These crises have also exposed a credibility and trust deficit in the ability of global institutions to manage challenges in a timely and efficient manner,” he said. “With more than 40% of the world's population within the SCO, our collective decisions will surely have a global impact."
Jaishankar did not mention Russia's war in Ukraine in his remarks, and analysts say Moscow is unlikely to face backlash over its invasion among the grouping and will instead use the meeting to flex its influence in the region.
The SCO was founded in 2001 by China and Russia, and included the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It was expanded in 2017 to include India and Pakistan. Iran is expected to join the organization later this year.
Jaishankar on Friday also stressed the need to fight terrorism, noting the group is particularly concerned about the security situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban swept to power after America's chaotic departure last year.
He said cross-border terrorism must be stopped, a veiled dig at archrival Pakistan, which sent its foreign minister to Goa in the first visit to India by a high-ranking official in nearly a decade.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgent groups fighting for the independence of Indian-controlled Kashmir or its integration into Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.
“Let's not get caught up in weaponizing terrorism for diplomatic point scoring,” Pakistan's foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said in his opening remarks.
A flurry of bilateral talks were held Thursday ahead of the meeting, as Jaishankar met with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
The meeting between the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers came amid a tense situation along their disputed border, where a three-year standoff has involved thousands of soldiers stationed in the eastern Ladakh region.
Qin said the border situation was “stable overall” and that both sides should abide by existing agreements to “promote the further cooling and easing of the border situation and maintain sustainable peace and tranquility in the border area,” according to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry.
India did not release a statement after the meeting, but Jaishankar tweeted afterwards to say the focus remained on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace along the border.
Qin also met with Lavrov on Thursday. China is the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas exports, pumping billions of dollars into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s treasury and helping the Kremlin resist Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
Beijing is also trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force, and has said it would like to serve as a mediator in the war.
Qin said China would continue to promote peace talks on Ukraine and maintain communication with Russia to make “tangible contributions to a political settlement of the crisis,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said.
Last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Beijing would send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible political settlement.
China has blamed the U.S. and NATO for provoking Russia and refused to criticize Moscow’s actions. However, it has refrained from issuing a full-throated endorsement of the invasion and is not known to have provided arms or other material assistance to the Russian military effort.