Brazil and France target World Cup semi-finals
AFP / SAEED KHANNeymar looks sharper with each match
The World Cup bursts back into life on Friday as tournament favourites Brazil take on a Belgium side brimming with talent while a young France team face battle-hardened Uruguay.
Neymar's Brazil are aiming to win a record-extending sixth World Cup at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium on July 15.
But first, the world's most expensive player and his star-studded supporting cast have to get past Belgium, who boast an array of their firepower, to reach the semi-finals.
In a Kazan Arena expected to be dominated by yellow-clad Brazil fans, Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne have a chance to prove they can cut it at the highest international level.
They will have to be wary of attacking threats coming at them from every direction.
"Individually, Brazil are the strongest team in this World Cup," said vastly experienced Belgium defender Vincent Kompany.
"But it doesn't affect our chances against them. None of us are going to sleep at night thinking 'We have already lost to Brazil'.
"We are going to look them in the eye. But if we make this a match of individuals, then we'll lose," he said.
Brazil coach Tite said he was desperate to win the match without resorting to the "horror" of penalties after three of the last-16 ties were settled by spot-kicks.
"A football match should never be settled with the horror of penalties. I don't see that as a valid result," Tite told a packed press conference on Thursday. "For me, there has to be another way."
AFP / Odd ANDERSENKevin De Bruyne provides Belgium's creative spark
Brazil made a slow start in Russia but hit their stride with an impressive performance to shut down Mexico in the last round, even though Neymar was roundly criticised for once again play-acting at the merest contact from an opponent.
"If I seem more relaxed, it's because the players have put me in this position by playing better," said Tite.
- 'So many qualities' -
France overran Argentina in a last-16 match that appeared to signal the passing of a torch to a new generation of superstars, as 19-year-old Kylian Mbappe scored twice to outshine Lionel Messi and dump the 2014 finalists out of the competition.
Yet nobody in the French camp is under any illusions that Uruguay will give them the acres of space they enjoyed against the disorganised Argentinian defence.
"Uruguay have so many assets, so many qualities," said France coach Didier Deschamps. "They defend as a unit, they play together and they love to do that."
Uruguay are crossing their fingers that prolific striker Edinson Cavani will recover from the calf injury he sustained in his impressive two-goal performance that ended the hopes of Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal.
AFP / Martin BERNETTIEdinson Cavani was back in training on Thursday
Cavani was back in training on Thursday and France are acutely aware of the threat posed by the man who plays his club football for Paris Saint-Germain.
"I am preparing my team for if Cavani plays," Deschamps said, although he suggested Uruguay were keeping their cards close to their chest: "If he plays or not, I will only know 90 minutes before the game."
In England, World Cup fever is building as hopes rise that Gareth Southgate's young team can beat Sweden on Saturday and reach the semi-finals for the first time since 1990.
Even Bank of England governor Mark Carney is getting swept up in the excitement, saying that if the Three Lions were to win the tournament for the first time since 1966, "it would be an unalloyed, unadulterated, absolute good".
Coach Gareth Southgate has urged his young squad to seize their chance.
"It's a great opportunity, and although our team will be individually better in two years, we might not have this opportunity again," Southgate told the BBC.
In Saturday's other quarter-final, host nation Russia will hope to keep their rollercoaster ride through the finals going when they face Croatia.
Written off as no-hopers before the tournament, Russia are now within reach of their first semi-final since 1966.
US using DNA tests to reunite children with migrant parents
GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / SPENCER PLATTWomen and their children, many fleeing poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatamala and El Salvador, arrive at a bus station following release from Customs and Border Protection in McAllen, Texas on June 22, 2018
US officials have resorted to DNA testing on up to 3,000 detained children who remain separated from their migrant parents, a top official said Thursday as President Donald Trump's administration struggles to rapidly reunite families at the center of a border crisis.
The controversial, newly announced procedures are part of government efforts to meet rapidly approaching court-imposed deadlines for reuniting children with their parents, and come as the president himself once again demanded swift action by Congress to fix the country's "insane" immigration laws.
The Department of Health and Human Services is "doing DNA testing to confirm parentage quickly and accurately," HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters on a conference call, as his team said the procedure was being conducted through "harmless" cheek swabs.
Normally used as a last-resort means of identification -- if birth certificates or other documents are unavailable -- DNA testing is being used to speed the process to meet a judge's order to reunite families by June 26, and by next Tuesday for some 100 children under age five.
But Azar portrayed the process as orderly and disputed accusations that the Trump administration has failed to account for some minors.
"HHS knows the identity and location of every minor in the care of our grantees," he said, adding that authorities were working to reunite children with their parents "as expeditiously as possible."
About 11,800 minors are currently in US custody after crossing over from Mexico, Azar said. Eighty percent of those are teenagers, mostly males who entered the United States on their own.
Azar refused to provide an exact figure for the total number of detained children who have been split from their parents, only saying that number is "under 3,000" minors and that they are in "excellent" care, with three meals plus snacks each day and time for exercise and entertainment.
The administration had previously said that just over 2,000 separated minors remained in its care.
AFP / NICHOLAS KAMMUS President Donald Trump has spoken out repeatedly against lengthy judicial processes to determine migrants' eligibility for immigration, asylum or deportation, arguing they are a waste of US resources
Azar said reunited families would remain in custody of the Department of Homeland Security as their cases are adjudicated.
The DNA test results are being solely used to accurately connect parents with children, HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Jonathan White said on the call.
"This isn't some vast sprawling data set that we're matching up," he said.
But critics warn that very young children cannot give permission for such tests, which they say could ultimately be used for further monitoring, and that the policy shows the government never registered people properly when they were first detained.
"It's deplorable they are using the guise of reuniting children to collect even more sensitive data about very young children," said Jennifer Falcon of RAICES, a Texas-based group that is representing migrant families.
"This would allow the government to conduct surveillance on these children for the rest of their lives."
- 'INSANE' immigration laws -
Meanwhile Trump on Thursday uttered his latest contradictory outburst over the chaotic border crisis.
In a series of tweets, Trump demanded lawmakers "pass smart, fast and reasonable Immigration Laws" now, after the House of Representatives last month rejected a broad immigration bill that had his support.
AFP/File / Don EMMERTYeni Gonzalez, of Guatemala, was reunited with her three children on July 3, 2018 in Harlem, six weeks after being separated at the border
"When people, with or without children, enter our Country, they must be told to leave without our... Country being forced to endure a long and costly trial," he wrote.
Trump has spoken out repeatedly against lengthy judicial processes to determine migrants' eligibility for immigration, asylum or deportation, arguing they are a waste of US resources.
"Congress - FIX OUR INSANE IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW!" he tweeted.
It was the latest conflicting message by Trump to Congress.
Before the June 27 House vote, he said Republicans -- who control both chambers -- "should stop wasting their time on immigration" until after the midterm elections in November.
Days later he traveled to Capitol Hill to urge Republicans to back the pending bill.
After it failed, Trump insisted he had "never pushed the Republicans to vote for the Immigration bill" because it would not have received enough Democratic support to clear the Senate.
Trump has made fighting immigration -- both illegal and legal -- a central plank of his fiercely US-centered policy agenda, resulting in the "zero tolerance" immigration approach under which undocumented border crossers were being systematically prosecuted, and their children separated from them.
Faced with a barrage of criticism, Trump signed an executive order to halt the family separations, but made no specific provisions for those already split apart.
French MPs warn of nuclear safety 'failings'
AFP/File / PHILIPPE DESMAZESFrance is the world's most nuclear-dependent country, with 58 reactors providing 75 percent of its electricity
A French parliamentary inquiry on Thursday flagged up "failings" in the defences of the country's nuclear power plants, days after activists crashed a drone into a facility to underscore safety concerns.
"When you look for failings you find them, and some are more concerning than others," said Barbara Pompili, a lawmaker from the governing Republic on the Move party.
France is the world's most nuclear-dependent country, with 58 reactors providing 75 percent of its electricity.
Environmentalist group Greenpeace has carried out a string of break-ins at nuclear facilities in recent years to prove its claim that they are vulnerable to accidents and terror attacks.
In the latest stunt Tuesday, it flew a drone mocked up as Superman into an ageing plant in Bugey, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) outside the southeastern city of Lyon.
The drone crashed into a building housing a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel, one of the most radioactive areas at the site.
The cross-party commission tasked with looking into nuclear safety spent five months interviewing experts and visiting facilities, including in Japan where they reviewed measures taken after the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The lawmakers said the number of safety incidents in France "has risen steadily".
They cited in particular last year's temporary shutdown of the four reactors at a plant in Tricastin in the southeast, seen as prone to flooding in the event of an earthquake, and a blast at a facility at Flamanville in the north.
The report recommended 33 steps to improve nuclear safety, including boosting police numbers at atomic plants and reducing the number of subcontractors in the industry.
- 'We cannot verify' -
President Emmanuel Macron has been noncommittal about a pledge by his Socialist predecessor Francois Hollande to drastically reduce the share of nuclear power in France's energy mix.
Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said in November that meeting Hollande's targets would be "difficult" and that a rushed move to bolster the share of renewables could jeopardise power supplies.
Anti-nuclear campaigners argue that older plants, like the 39-year-old Bugey facility, were not built to withstand an attack from the likes of the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda.
Greenpeace has said the pools for storing spent fuel are particularly vulnerable.
The parliamentary report demanded that the government provide a timetable for dismantling older plants.
It also questioned the safety of a plan to store nuclear waste deep underground in the northeastern village of Bure and called for the number of subcontractors in the nuclear industry to be kept to a minimum, "to improve control over the operation of the sites".
State energy utility EDF said the report contained "a number of errors" and said it would respond by mid-July.
The MPs for their part complained that many of the questions they put to the state and EDF went unanswered, with both invoking national security concerns.
"We have the feeling that a lot of work is being done to protect the plants but we cannot verify it," Pompili said.
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