web analytics

ARY NEWS

Reuters

  • Steve Jobs movie wins reviewer praise, Oscar hopes

    While the positive views were not unanimous, Variety.com was impressed. Its reviewer said that Fassbender, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, gave Jobs “the brilliant, maddening, ingeniously designed and monstrously self-aggrandizing movie he deserves.”

    It described the movie as a “terrific actors’ showcase and an incorrigibly entertaining ride that looks set to be one of the fall’s early must-see attractions.” The website also listed Fassbender as a “no-brainer best actor Oscar contender.”

    Hollywood Reporter said the movie is “clearly positioned as one of the prestige titles of the fall season and will be high priority viewing for discerning audiences around the world.”

    A New York Times blog said the audience “responded warmly” to the film when it aired at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on Saturday.

    Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he was impressed with the movie, according to Deadline Hollywood. It cited Wozniak saying he felt he was “actually watching Steve Jobs and the others” rather than actors and that he gave “full credit to Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin for getting it so right.”

    Indiewire.com said the movie would “factor in the Oscar race,” and that Fassbender and Kate Winslet, who plays Macintosh marketing chief Joanna Hoffman, “dazzle with their fleet-tongued performances, unlike anything they have done before.”

    The Guardian, however, gave a more mixed review, suggesting it would mostly appeal to “the Apple geek.” It said Steve Jobs was “Boyle’s best film in years” and that “Fassbender excels.” But it said that while the movie “appears to be admirably unsentimental in its portrayal of Jobs, by the end we’re getting close to Apple-sponsored hero iWorship.”

    The Chicago Tribune, also not totally won over, said the movie was “never less than entertaining visually, but a little toothless dramatically.”

    The movie, due to be released by Comcast’s Universal Pictures on Oct. 9, is expected to be shown at the New York Film Festival. Indiewire said Boyle would return to the editing room to put the finishing touches on the movie before the New York screening.

    The festival screening occurred a day after the opening of “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” a widely reviewed documentary about Jobs directed by Alex Gibney.

  • Boeing opens commercial spaceship plant in Florida

    “This is a point in history that reflects a new era in human spaceflight,” Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said at a grand opening ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center.

    Boeing’s newly named CST-100 Starliner spaceships will be prepared for flight in a processing hangar once used by NASA’s space shuttles. The capsule’s debut test flight is targeted for 2017.

    Starliners will fly from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard Atlas 5 rockets, which are built and flown by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) and Boeing.

    NASA is paying up to $4.2 billion for a Starliner test flight and up to six missions to the station. The U.S. space agency has a similar contract with privately owned SpaceX, which intends to accomplish the work for $2.6 billion.

    NASA previously contributed $621 million to Boeing and $545 million for SpaceX for capsule design and development.

    Both Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon capsules can carry seven-member crews, or a mix of crew and cargo, to and from the station, a $100 billion laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

    Muilenburg declined to say how much of its own money Boeing is putting into the project, but said its ultimate success will depend on customers beyond NASA.

    Boeing already has agreements to provide space transportation services for privately owned Bigelow Aerospace, which plans to lease out space aboard its planned orbiting outposts for scientific research and commercial programs. A prototype Bigelow habitat is scheduled to be launched and attached to the space station by early 2016 for a two-year test flight.

    Boeing’s refurbishment of the retired space shuttle hangar was partly financed by Florida, which so far has invested about $2 billion to lure aerospace companies to the state.

    On Sept. 15, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to be at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to unveil a new commercial space project, also backed by state and local economic development agencies.

    Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, is expected to announce plans for a rocket manufacturing plant in an industrial park adjacent to Kennedy Space Center. The company also plans to lease a mothballed launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, state and local officials familiar with the project said.

  • Three-man international crew safely reaches space station

    The Soyuz TMA-18M blasted off to the $100 billion space laboratory from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to take Russian Commander Sergei Volkov, Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen into orbit.

    “The Soyuz has now successfully docked at the ISS,” a NASA TV presenter said after the spaceship reached the 15-nation orbiting outpost at about 1040 Moscow time (0740 GMT).

    In less than two hours, hatches are to open, and the trio will float in weightlessness into the station which is currently manned by a six-member crew.

    Mogensen, dubbed “Denmark’s Gagarin” after the Soviet cosmonaut and first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, took Danish-made exercise bikes and 20 of Danish toymaker LEGO’s plastic figures into orbit.

    He and Aimbetov, Kazakhstan’s third cosmonaut, are due to return to Earth on Sept. 12 together with veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who has been working aboard the ISS since March. By then, Padalka will have racked up a total of 878 days in space, more than any other person.

    Volkov will land next March together with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko, who will have spent one year in space by that time.

    This time it took two days to reach the ISS, rather than a six-hour approach usually taken in recent years. Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month the altitude of the ISS, lifted in July to avoid space debris, required the slower approach.

    On Thursday, ballistics experts from Russia’s Mission Control and U.S. space agency NASA advised the Soyuz crew to make a maneuver in order to avoid a collision with a third stage of a Japanese rocket launched in 1989, Roscosmos said.

  • Google hopes to reenter China by fall: tech website

    The company hopes to get Chinese government approval for a China version of its Play store mobile app, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the plan. (bit.ly/1NfthB8)

    The tech giant is also planning to extend support of a version of Android for wearable devices in the country, The Information cited one of the people as saying.

    Google has assured Chinese authorities that it will follow local laws and block Play store apps that the government deems objectionable, one person familiar with the plans told the website.

    The Play store app will only work on devices running the recently unveiled “M” version of Android, and only on devices that comply with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requirements, The Information reported.

    Google is also planning to offer new incentives to phone makers to upgrade Android phones to the latest versions of its operating system, one person familiar with the plans told the website.

    Google was not immediately available for comment.

  • G20 eyes faster economic reforms as cheap credit not enough for growth

    But they also said they were confident growth would pick up and, as a result, interest rates in “some advanced economies” — code for the United States — would have to rise.

    “Monetary policies will continue to support economic activity consistent with central banks’ mandates, but monetary policy alone cannot lead to balanced growth,” the communique of the G20 finance ministers and central bankers said.

    “We note that in line with the improving economic outlook, monetary policy tightening is more likely in some advanced economies.”

    The wording defied pressure from emerging markets to brand an expected U.S. rate rise as a risk to growth.

    “We heard different opinions on the possible Fed decision. Some think the Fed needs to make a decision sooner rather than later, while others think it should delay,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cevdet Yilmaz told a news conference.

    To limit the volatility of capital flows from emerging economies into dollars — the reason for concern about a future Federal Reserve hike — G20 financial leaders said they would avoid any surprise or excessive moves.

    “We will carefully calibrate and clearly communicate our actions, especially against the backdrop of major monetary and other policy decisions, to minimize negative spillovers, mitigate uncertainty and promote transparency,” they said.

    Concern about the turbulence that might be caused by a possible Fed rate hike was amplified by investor worries over an economic slowdown in China, the world’s second-biggest economy.

    G20 officials said they discussed the devaluation by China of its yuan currency in August, a move some may see as a realignment to market rates rather than a move to help exports.

    “Many supported the measures that China took… the ministers were very tolerant,” Russian deputy finance minister, Sergei Storchak told a news briefing.

    The Chinese devaluation as well as the stock market plunge on growth jitters were all part of a difficult path to a more liberal economy, officials said.

    “It’s an unbelievably difficult transformation and it’s not surprising that there are bumps, that it’s not a perfectly smooth process, and I think we had plenty of explanations, opportunity to ask questions, and it was a dialogue, and a very open one,” IMF head Christine Lagarde said after the meeting.

    But some were less impressed.

    “Their explanations weren’t very good. They should have been much clearer,” said Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso about the Chinese.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew noted that global economies were keen to see the world’s second-largest economy move to an exchange rate that reflected market fundamentals.

    “When the world has called on China to move toward a more market-determined exchange rate, it’s in the context of doing so in an orderly way with clearly articulated policies that can be understood and that reinforce themselves in a positive way,” he said in a statement.

    LOW RATES ALONE “WON’T CUT IT”

    G20 officials welcomed strengthening activity in some economies but said that growth fell short of expectations because reforms were not being implemented quickly enough.

    Last year, G20 leaders agreed to boost global output over the next five years by 2 percent above what was already expected at the time through coordinated reforms and investment.

    But they were behind schedule, the G20 communique indicated.

    “We are making progress toward our commitments (but)… more effort is needed for implementation,” the statement said.

    Lagarde was even more explicit, making clear governments had for too long relied on the supply of cheap cash from central banks that have been running ultra-loose monetary policy.

    “Monetary policy alone will not cut it. It is necessary. It is recommended from our perspective, particularly in Europe and in Japan still, but it will not cut it on its own,” she said.

    “Clearly in the fiscal sphere as well as in the structural reforms sphere, more needs to be done, and it needs to accompany and eventually take the baton from the central bank governors.”

    But, in what appeared to be a vicious circle, the reforms were made more difficult by the weaker global growth, Canadian Finance Minister Joe Oliver told reporters.

    “We’re making progress, but the base that we hoped we would have, we haven’t arrived at, because the growth has been disappointing and the projections have been downgraded,” Oliver said, adding that one-third of the G20’s extra growth commitments have been implemented.

    Boosting investment was key, the G20 financial leaders agreed. Governments will prepare their final investment strategies by November, when G20 leaders are to meet to discuss them in Antalya in Turkey.

    While not a topic of the agenda, officials informally discussed on the sidelines China’s ambitions for its yuan currency to become part of the special drawing rights (SDR), a virtual currency used only by the IMF.

    Washington’s Lew voiced an openness to that happening, as long as China carried out promised reforms.

    “If they make the kinds of reforms that they have committed to and indicated they are prepared to make, there’s an openness to a positive outcome of the review.”

  • IMF's Lagarde says Fed should not rush its rate rise decision

    Many emerging market economies are concerned that a Fed rate rise would trigger large outflows of capital from emerging economies into dollar-denominated assets, creating market turmoil that would hurt growth.

    Finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies discussed the issue thoroughly at a meeting in Ankara, Lagarde told a news conference after the talks.

    “It should really do it for good, if I may say,” Lagarde said. “In other words, not give it a try and have to come back.”

    “So, what we have said is, the IMF thinks that it is better to make sure that the data are absolutely confirmed, that there is no uncertainty, neither on the front of price stability, nor on the front of employment and unemployment, before it actually makes that move,” she said.

    “And that would call for being in the curve, rather than necessarily ahead of the curve or indeed behind the curve.”

  • Clinton says she paid staffer to maintain private email server

    After a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Clinton told reporters the payments went to information technology specialist Bryan Pagliano, who this week declined to produce documents and testify before a U.S. House of Representatives committee about the server, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

    “With respect to personal services that he provided to me and my family, we obviously paid for those services and did so because, during a period of time, we continued to need his technical assistance. And I think that’s in the public record,” Clinton said.

    Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady who is the front-runner for her party’s 2016 presidential nomination, has been criticized for using the unsecured server to conduct government business when she was the top U.S. diplomat from 2009-13 as well as for how she handled classified information.

    Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said on Twitter: “Bryan was hired by the Clinton family as a consultant in order to help out periodically with the management of the system in Chappaqua that hosted the family’s emails.”

    Chappaqua is the New York town where Clinton lives.

    The Washington Post earlier reported the Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for computer services before he joined the State Department, citing an April 2009 financial disclosure form he filed.

    Even after he arrived at the State Department in May 2009, the Clintons continued to pay Pagliano to maintain the server, the Post reported. The paper quoted a campaign official as saying the arrangement with Pagliano ensured that taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was also used by Clinton’s family and aides to former President Bill Clinton.

    Pagliano was the IT director for Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign and went to work for the State Department when Clinton took up the Cabinet post in the Obama administration.

    Clinton has in the past hired staff to work for her simultaneously in public and private capacities, most notably top aide Huma Abedin, the Post said.

    Clinton said on Friday she was sorry that her use of a personal email account while secretary of state had caused confusion, and blamed herself for “not thinking a lot” about the matter when she took the job.

  • Global concerns may shrink Wall Street's third-quarter estimates

    Wall Street expects a 3.4 percent decline in earnings for the S&P 500 .SPX for the quarter. Estimates have already fallen for 9 out of 10 of the benchmark index’s sectors so far this year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

    S&P revenue is expected to fall 2.8 percent for the quarter, led by steep declines in the energy and materials sectors. As companies tend to revise guidance around the end of the quarter, estimates may become even less optimistic.

    “Analysts will likely be pulling in their reins going into the quarterly reports and the pre-announcement season. This could happen fairly quickly,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York.

    The dollar index .DXY, measuring the greenback against a basket of major currencies, has risen 0.8 percent so far this quarter after falling 2.9 percent last quarter. Ghriskey sees the currency’s strength hurting the competitiveness of U.S. exports against local products overseas and imports here, resulting in shrinking revenue and earnings for U.S. multinationals.

    In addition, demand is likely slower in many overseas markets with slowing growth in China and recessions in Brazil and Russia hurting both revenue and earnings.

    Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, says that since the majority of S&P companies tend to beat earnings estimates every quarter, he will focus more on revenue than the bottom line, which can be tweaked with cost cuts and share buybacks to beat estimates.

    But Paulsen is not optimistic about the coming quarter.

    “It seems clear to me that top-line sales results will be a little disappointing again,” he said. “If you look at what’s going on in global economies, it doesn’t paint a real good picture of what top-line growth will be like. The question is: ‘How much of that is already factored in?’”

    U.S. telecommunications .SPLRCL, which is mostly insulated from global markets, is the only S&P sector that has shown improving estimates for both third-quarter earnings and revenue.

    With crude oil prices falling sharply, the energy sector .SPNY is faring the worst, with current expectations for a 62 percent earnings decline and a 33 percent revenue drop.

    Analysts expect the materials sector .SPLRCM to report a 11.8 percent earnings decline due to falling commodities prices and a 10.4 percent revenue drop. They see earnings for industrials .SPLRCI, which have big overseas exposure, falling 4.9 percent and revenue falling 5 percent.

    Many investors hope the equity market becomes less volatile after August’s sharp swings. But earnings weakness could make jittery market participants question valuations all over again.

    “A lot of people think the market will come back. If we see fundamentals that challenge that story, that could be a very significant part of this earnings season,” said Paulsen.

  • U.S. labor market shows some muscle despite slower job growth

    Nonfarm payrolls increased 173,000 last month after an upwardly revised gain of 245,000 in July, the Labor Department said on Friday. August’s gain was the smallest in five months as the factory sector lost the most jobs since July 2013.

    The jobs count, however, may have been tarnished by a statistical fluke that has often led to sharp upward revisions to payroll figures for August after initial weak readings.

    Indicating the hiring slowdown was likely not reflective of the economy’s true health, the jobless rate fell two-tenths of a point to 5.1 percent, its lowest level since April 2008.

    In addition, payrolls data for June and July were revised to show 44,000 more jobs created than previously reported, bringing the average job gains for the past three months to a solid 221,000. Average hourly earnings increased 8 cents, the biggest rise in seven months and the length of the average workweek also expanded.

    “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Alan Ruskin, global head of currency strategy at Deutsche Bank in New York. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”

    Stocks on Wall Street, which could be pressured by higher rates, ended down more than 1 percent. Prices for U.S. government debt rose, while the dollar fell marginally against a basket of currencies.

    While the mixed report did little to alter views that the U.S. economy remains vibrant despite volatile global financial markets and slowing Chinese growth, it could further complicate the Fed’s decision at a policy meeting on Sept. 16-17.

    In the wake of a recent global equities sell-off, financial markets significantly scaled back bets on a September rate hike over the past month. But Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer told CNBC last week it was too early to decide whether the stock market rout had made an increase less compelling.

    “With this jobs report … the Federal Reserve finds itself in a real uncertainty jam,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz in Newport Beach, California.

    MISSING FORECASTS

    Economists in a Reuters survey had forecast nonfarm payrolls increasing by 220,000 last month, but they had also warned that the model used to smooth the data for seasonal fluctuations is often thrown off at the start of a new school year.

    They said the data could be further muddied because of a typically low response rate from employers to the government’s payroll surveys in August.

    But the evidence of a tightening labor market added to a string of upbeat data, including figures on automobile sales and housing, that has suggested the economy was moving ahead with strong momentum after growing at a robust 3.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter.

    The decline in the unemployment rate brought it into the range that most Fed officials think is consistent with a low but steady rate of inflation, and would likely bolster their expectation that a pick-up in wages will help lift inflation toward their 2 percent target.

    A broad measure of joblessness that includes people who want

    to work but have given up searching and those working part-time

    because they cannot find full-time employment fell to 10.3 percent, the lowest level since June 2008.

    In August, construction payrolls rose 3,000 on top of the 7,000 jobs added in July. Mining and logging employment fell by 10,000 jobs, the eighth straight monthly decline.

    The sector has shed 90,000 jobs so far this year, with industries that support mining activity accounting for 80 percent of the drop. Oilfield giants Schlumberger (SLB.N) and Halliburton (HAL.N) and many others in the oil and gas industry have announced thousands of job cuts this year.

    Manufacturing payrolls slid 17,000 as sharp declines at metals, machinery and food industries offset a solid increase in employment in the automobile sector.

    The 0.3 percent increase in hourly earnings left them 2.2 percent above their year-ago level, still well below the 3.5 percent growth rate economists consider healthy.

    Aggregate weekly hours rose 0.4 percent, the largest gain since November. The combination of more hours and higher earnings left workers with a 0.7 percent increase in their take-home wages.

    Some analysts think average hourly earnings are being held back by falling wages in oil field services.

    But a tighter labor market and decisions by several state and local governments to raise the minimum wage should eventually translate into faster earnings growth.

    A number of retailers, including Walmart (WMT.N), Target (TGT.N) and TJX Cos (TJX.N), have increased pay for hourly workers since the start of the year.

    “Regardless of which meeting this year the Fed begins to raise rates, next year we expect core inflation to surprise on the upside, forcing the Fed into tightening policy more aggressively than the markets currently anticipate,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

  • Austria, Germany open borders to migrants offloaded by Hungary

    Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria’s civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where authorities prompted arranged for thousands to head straight on to Germany.

    German police said the first 1,000 of up to 10,000 migrants expected on Saturday had arrived on special trains in Munich. Austrian police said over 6,000 had entered the country by midday with more expected in what has become Europe’s most acute refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

    Munich police said Arabic-speaking interpreters helped refugees with procedures at emergency registration centers. The seemingly efficient Austrian and German reception contrasted with the disorder prevalent in Hungary.

    “It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary,” said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family.

    In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals but trains to western Europe remained canceled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 km (110 miles) away, like others had tried on Friday.

    After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian frontier. Austria said it had agreed with Germany to allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.

    Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the boundary and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, “Refugees welcome”.

    “We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed, naming Europe’s famously biggest and most affluent economy that is the favored destination of many refugees. Another, who declined to be named, said: “Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment.”

    Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants gathered in Budapest, part of a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.

    By contrast, the Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4,600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services.

    DESPERATE MIGRANTS FORCE HUNGARY’S HAND

    Hungary, the main entry point into Europe’s borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by Sept. 15.

    Hungarian officials have portrayed the crisis as a defense of Europe’s prosperity, identity and “Christian values” against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.

    Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Hungary would deploy police forces along its border with Serbia after Sept. 15 and the army too if parliament approves a government proposal.

    “It’s not 150,000 (migrants coming) that some (in the EU) want to divide according to quotas, it’s not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it’s millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless,” he said.

    For days, several thousand camped outside Budapest’s main railway station, where trains to western Europe were canceled as the government insisted all entering Hungary be registered with asylum applications processed there as per EU rules.

    But the logjam broke on Friday when, in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary’s frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting “Germany, Germany!”

    The government appeared to throw in the towel, mobilizing a fleet of buses to take them to the Austrian border.

    The scenes were emblematic of a crisis — about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the European Union this year — that has left the 28-nation EU groping for solutions amid dysfunctional squabbling over burden-sharing.

    At an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, the usual diplomatic conviviality unraveled as they failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis. They are especially at odds over proposals for country-by-country quotas to take in asylum seekers.

    “Given the challenges facing our German friends as well, all of Europe needs to wake up. (The time for) reverie is over,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

    “Now the continent of Europe is challenged. In this great challenge the entire continent has to give a unified answer. Whoever still thinks that withdrawal from the EU or a barbed wire fence around Austria will solve the problem is wrong.”

    British finance minister George Osborne said Europe and Britain must offer asylum to those genuinely fleeing persecution but also need to boost aid, defeat people-smuggling gangs and tackle the conflict in Syria to ease the migrant crisis.

    BOY’S BODY ON BEACH PRICKS EU’S CONSCIENCE

    Pressure to take effective action rose sharply this week after pictures flashed around the world of the body of a 3-year-old Syrian Kurdish boy washed up on a Turkish resort beach, personalizing the collective tragedy of the refugees. Aylan Kurdi had drowned along with his mother and brother while trying to cross by boat on a tiny rubber dinghy to a Greek island.

    Hungary has lashed out at Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, for declaring it would accept Syrian requests regardless of where they enter the EU.

    Budapest says this has swelled the influx, and like some others in ex-Communist east European states — unused to taking in notable numbers of foreigners — it is resisting calls by some western EU leaders for each of the bloc’s 28 members to accept a quota of refugees. The discord continued on Saturday.

    “What happened is the consequence of the failed migration policy of the European Union and the irresponsible statements made by European politicians,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on arrival at the Luxembourg meeting.

    The flow of migrants risking rickety boats to cross the Mediterranean, or baton-wielding police on Balkan borders, shows no sign of abating despite more trips by sea ending in disaster.

    Over 2,000 have died at sea so far this year, including 30-40 on Friday who were reported drowned off Libya’s coast.

    The Greek coastguard said on Saturday that about 13,370 migrants and refugees had been ferried from Greece’s eastern islands to Athens since Monday.

    A record 50,000 hit Greek shores in July alone and were ferried from islands unable to cope to the mainland by a government already floundering in financial crisis and keen to dispatch them promptly north into Macedonia, whence they enter Serbia and then Hungary.

    Hungary said on Saturday it had recorded some 165,000 entering so far this year.

    Determined to stem the tide, Hungary is building a 3.5-metre (11.5-foot) high fence along its border with Serbia. On Friday, the Budapest parliament adopted measures the government says will effectively seal the frontier to migrants as of Sept. 15.

    They include “transit zones” on the border, where asylum seekers would be held until their requests are processed and, if denied, they would be deported.