News of the day from across the world, June 17

1Refugee deaths: Authorities in Niger say 34 people, including 20 children, have died while attempting to cross the Sahara Desert in pursuit of a better life. Niger’s government said Thursday that it believed the victims had been trying to reach Europe. Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum has vowed to pursue stiff penalties for the traffickers who demand high prices to transport people from sub-Saharan Africa to Algeria and beyond. Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries, and many there attempt to reach North Africa and Europe in search of work. The dangerous desert voyage has claimed an untold number of lives, particularly when smugglers abandon trucks or fail to bring sufficient water.

2 Hemingway possessions: On an island where finding a handful of screws can be a days-long odyssey, the new era of U.S.-Cuban normalization has brought hundreds of thousands of dollars of supplies to build a simple but up-to-date conservation facility for Ernest Hemingway artifacts on his Havana estate, ranging from books and letters to fishing rods and African animal heads. Hemingway lived at the airy home known as the Finca Vigia in the 1940s and ’50s, and places where the Nobel literature laureate worked, fished and drank have become important Cuban cultural sites and draws for tourists from around the world.

3Premier ousted: Croatia’s parliament voted overwhelmingly Thursday to oust Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic, triggering the fall of the government and raising the prospect of an early election in the European Union’s newest member state. Parliament acted on the motion filed by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, the senior party in the ruling “Patriotic Coalition.” The conservatives have said Oreskovic, a Canada-educated financial expert who was elected to the post in January, proved incapable of leading the country amid deep economic and social problems.

4 Arctic visit: Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday visited Norway’s extreme north, viewing areas where climate change has melted ice and opened new sea lanes. Trailed by staff and journalists in small Zodiac-type inflatable boats, Kerry and Norway’s foreign minister motored in an Arctic scientific vessel from a research station in Ny-Alesund, the world’s northernmost civilian settlement. The short cruise took Kerry and his delegation across the iceberg strewn Kongsifjorden (King’s Bay Fjord), where puffins and other Arctic birds skirted the waters, to the Blomstrand Glacier. The glacier has receded significantly in the past 25 years to 30 years, with summer temperatures that can now be 8 degrees and 11 degrees higher than they once were.

5Refugees rescued: Greece’s coast guard rescued 57 refugees from a sailboat which ran aground off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos Thursday, and arrested two suspected smugglers who had also been on board, authorities said. The coast guard said the vessel ran aground south-southwest of Lesbos. Two fishing boats in the area assisted two coast guard patrol boats. The number of migrants and refugees reaching Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast has fallen dramatically in recent months, from hundreds or even thousands daily to none or a few dozen, following a European Union-Turkey deal under which those arriving on or after March 20 face being returned to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.

Chronicle News Services