Tag: europe

UK law to send asylum seekers to Rwanda passed after months of wrangling | Migration News

The controversial law is expected to come into force within days with the first deportation flights in weeks.

A controversial United Kingdom government bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has finally secured the approval of the upper house of parliament, which had demanded numerous amendments, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to start the first flights to Kigali within weeks.

Sunak hopes the legislation will boost the dismal fortunes of his Conservative Party in an election widely expected to take place later this year.

The House of Lords, an unelected chamber, had long refused to back the divisive plan without additional safeguards, but relented after Sunak said the government would force parliament to sit as late into Monday night as necessary to get the bill passed.

“No ifs, no buts. These flights are going to Rwanda,” Sunak told a news conference earlier in the day.

The Rwanda scheme, criticised by United Nations human rights experts and groups supporting asylum seekers, has been beset by legal challenges ever since it was first proposed as a way to curb the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats.

In June 2022, the first deportees were taken off a flight at the last minute after an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. The following year, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that sending asylum seekers on a one-way ticket to Kigali was illegal and would put them at risk.

The National Audit Office, a public spending watchdog, has estimated it will cost the UK some 540 million pounds ($665m) to deport the first 300 asylum seekers.

The House of Lords criticised the latest bill as inadequate and demanded amendments, including a requirement that Rwanda could not be treated as safe until an independent monitoring body found it to be true.

They also wanted an exemption for agents, allies and employees of the UK overseas, including Afghans who fought alongside the British Armed Forces, from being removed.

In the end, the Lords gave way and let the bill pass without any formal changes. The legislation is expected to receive Royal Assent from King Charles later this week and will then become law.

More than 120,000 people – many fleeing wars and poverty in Africa, the Middle East and Asia – have reached the UK since 2018 by crossing the English Channel in small boats, usually inflatable dinghies, on journeys organised by people-smuggling gangs.

Last year, 29,437 asylum seekers made the crossing with one in five of them from Afghanistan, according to the Refugee Council.

Critics say the plan to deport people to Rwanda rather than handle asylum seekers at home is inhumane, citing concerns about the East African country’s own human rights record and the risk that asylum seekers may be sent back to countries where they would be in danger.

The so-called “Safety of Rwanda” bill states some existing UK human rights statutes will not apply to the scheme and Rwanda must be treated by UK judges as a safe destination, despite the Supreme Court declaring the scheme unlawful. It also limits individuals’ options for an appeal to only exceptional cases.

Other European countries, including Austria and Germany, are also looking at agreements to process asylum seekers in third countries.

Sunak’s plans could still be held up by legal challenges, and UN rights experts have suggested that airlines and aviation regulators could fall foul of internationally protected human rights laws if they participate in the deportations.

About 150 people have already been identified for the first two flights.

Polls suggest the Conservatives, who claimed that the UK’s departure from the European Union would give the country “control” over its borders and the ability to reduce immigration, will be badly beaten in the coming election by the opposition Labour Party.

Labour has said it will scrap the scheme if it wins power and work on a deal with the EU to return some arrivals to mainland Europe.



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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 789 | Russia-Ukraine war News

As the war enters its 789th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.

Fighting

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian missile attack that destroyed Kharkiv’s 240-metre (787-foot) television tower was part of a deliberate effort by Moscow to make Ukraine’s second-largest city uninhabitable.
  • Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern military command, described the situation around Chasiv Yar and its surrounding villages as “difficult” but “controllable” as a Russian force of about 20,000-25,000 troops tries to storm the eastern Ukrainian town, which lies on strategic high ground in the partially-occupied Donetsk region.
  • Ukraine denied Russian claims that it had taken control of Novomykhailivka in eastern Ukraine, saying its forces were still in control of the village, some 40km (25 miles) southwest of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Politics and diplomacy

  • A court in Moscow sentenced a 39-year-old Russian man to five years’ forced labour for spreading “deliberately false information” about the army after talking about the war in Ukraine in an impromptu street interview with journalists from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the United States government.
  • A military court in Moscow sentenced Meta Communications Director Andy Stone to six years in prison for “publicly defending terrorism”, a verdict handed down in absentia, the RIA news agency reported. Meta is designated an extremist organisation in Russia and its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram have been banned since 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Weapons

  • Zelenskyy spoke on the phone with US President Joe Biden and said that Kyiv and Washington had started talks on a bilateral security cooperation agreement, and finalised plans for more ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) long-range missiles to be sent to Ukraine.
  • European Union ministers said they were looking urgently at how to provide more air defences to Ukraine but stopped short of making concrete pledges to provide the Patriot systems that Kyiv has said it needs most.
  • United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will visit Poland on Tuesday and announce a 500 million pound ($617m) boost in military support for Ukraine, warning that Russia must be defeated to prevent its troops from pressing further into Europe. The UK will also send to Ukraine what it described as its largest-ever single package of military equipment, including 60 boats, more than 1,600 strike and air defence missiles and nearly 4 million rounds of small arms ammunition.

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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says Russian strike collapsed Kharkiv TV tower | Russia-Ukraine war News

Ukrainian president tells Joe Biden that Russian attack on the tower is part of a plan to make the city ‘uninhabitable’.

A Russian missile strike that broke in half a 240-metre (787-foot) television tower in Kharkiv is part of a deliberate effort by Moscow to make Ukraine’s second-largest city uninhabitable, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

On Monday, dramatic video footage showed the main mast of the television tower breaking off and falling to the ground in the city, which has been pounded by missile and drone strikes for weeks.

Zelenskyy said he told US President Joe Biden about the air strike that was carried out several minutes before they spoke by telephone.

“It is Russia’s clear intention to make the city uninhabitable,” he said, according to a readout of the call published on the Telegram messaging application.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv has a population of 1.3 million and lies just 30km (19 miles) from the Russian border, making it an easy target for ballistic missiles and other weapons as Ukraine’s air defences have dwindled.

Its power facilities have been damaged particularly badly since Russia last month began targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

“At the moment there are interruptions to the digital television signal,” regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

There were no casualties because workers at the site had taken shelter, he added.

The Service for State Special Communications said the structure of the tower had been “partially damaged” in what prosecutors said appeared to have been a strike with a Kh-59 cruise missile.

It said that there was “temporarily” no television signal and that they were working to restore it, urging residents of the city and region without a digital television signal to use cable or online television or the radio.

Russia first attacked Kharkiv’s television tower several times in early March 2022, soon after it launched its full-scale invasion. The signal was disrupted at the time.

Moscow has recently stepped up its attacks, while Ukraine is suffering a shortage of air defence capabilities. Kharkiv and the surrounding region have experienced the most intense strikes.

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EU threatens to suspend TikTok Lite app’s rewards feature | Social Media News

European Commission says the app has ‘risks of serious damage for the mental health of users’, including minors.

The European Union has launched a probe into TikTok’s spinoff Lite app and threatened to suspend an “addictive” feature on it that rewards users for watching and liking videos, amid child-safety concerns.

TikTok Lite arrived in France and Spain in March allowing users aged 18 and more to earn points that can be exchanged for goods like vouchers or gift cards through the app’s rewards programme.

The European Commission said in a statement on Monday that it has concerns about the app’s “risks of serious damage for the mental health of users”, including minors.

TikTok Lite is a smaller version of the popular TikTok app, taking up less memory in a smartphone and made to perform over slower internet connections.

TikTok last week failed to provide a risk assessment for the spinoff app by an April 18 deadline, the commission said, demanding the company now provide it by Tuesday.

It is threatening to impose interim measures including suspending the rewards programme in the European Union “pending the assessment of its safety”.

TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has until Wednesday to present a formal defence against such a measure.

The commission also warned that if TikTok failed to reply to the request, it could impose fines of up to one percent of its total annual income or of its global turnover and periodic penalties up to five percent of its average daily income or annual turnover worldwide.

TikTok said it would continue discussions with the commission and said the rewards programme was not available to minors.

Second TikTok probe

The probe is the EU’s second against TikTok under a sweeping new law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), that demands digital firms do more to police content online.

“We suspect TikTok ‘Lite’ could be as toxic and addictive as cigarettes ‘light’,” said the European Commission’s top tech enforcer, Thierry Breton.

“Unless TikTok provides compelling proof of its safety, which it has failed to do until now, we stand ready to trigger DSA interim measures including the suspension of TikTok Lite features,” Breton said.

The commission also quizzed TikTok about its measures to mitigate “systemic risks” in its Lite app and gave the platform until May 3 to respond.

TikTok Lite users can win rewards if they log in daily for 10 days, if they spend time watching videos (with an upper limit of 60 to 85 minutes per day) and if they undertake certain actions, such as liking videos and following content creators.

The commission said it believes TikTok launched the app “without prior diligent assessment of the risks it entails, in particular those related to the addictive effect of the platforms, and without taking effective risk mitigating measures”.

TikTok is among 22 “very large” digital platforms, including Amazon, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, that must comply with stricter rules under the DSA since August last year.

The law gives the EU the power to slap companies with heavy fines that could reach as high as six percent of a digital firm’s global annual revenues.

Repeat offenders can even see their platforms blocked in the 27-country European Union.

In February, the commission opened a formal probe into TikTok under the DSA over alleged violations of its obligations to protect minors online.

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Germany detains trio suspected of spying for China | Espionage News

The alleged spies have been working with Chinese agents for at least two years, authorities say.

Germany has arrested three people suspected of supplying sensitive technologies to China.

Prosecutors said on Monday that the German nationals handed technologies with potential military purposes to Chinese intelligence, with whom they have been working since before June 2022.

The arrests come as Western states continue to express concern over China’s economic and geopolitical policies.

The trio is also accused of exporting a special laser without permission, which was pinpointed as violating the country’s export laws.

The federal prosecutor identified the main suspect as Thomas R, who was described as an agent for a China-based employee of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Herwig F and Ina F – a married couple who run a company in Dusseldorf – were recruited to procure cooperation from researchers.

Through their company, the couple concluded a cooperation agreement with a German university, part of which involved preparing a study for a Chinese contractor on machine parts that can be used for operating powerful marine engines such as combat ships, the statement said.

The Chinese contract partner was the same MSS employee from whom Thomas R received his orders, and all three suspects worked together, Monday’s statement added.

The suspects also purchased a special laser from Germany on behalf of and with payment from the MSS and exported it to China without authorisation, according to the prosecutors.

German authorities accused the suspects of violating the country’s Foreign Trade and Payments Act which criminalises economic espionage.

German authorities said the alleged cooperation with the Chinese state service began around “an indeterminable date before June 2022”.

All three will be arraigned at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany on Tuesday, and could face a fine or imprisonment of up to five or 10 years, according to local media.

The arrests come just days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China, during which he pressed Beijing to guarantee German firms equal market access and also conveyed concerns in Europe about Beijing’s economic policies and support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the arrests “a great success for our counterespionage”.

“We are keeping an eye on the significant danger from Chinese espionage in business, industry and science,” she said in a statement. “We are watching these risks and threats very closely and have warned and sensitized people clearly so that protective measures can be stepped up everywhere.”

Berlin announced on Thursday that it had arrested two German-Russian dual nationals on suspicion of plotting sabotage attacks on US military sites in the country, in a bid to undermine Western military support for Ukraine.

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Iranian refugee hopes to be acquitted in Greece smuggling appeal trial | Refugees News

Athens, Greece – It was April 2022 when Homayoun Sabetara finally told his daughters he was in a Greek jail cell.

Sabetara, an Iranian national, had been arrested in August 2021 in Thessaloniki after driving a vehicle across the Turkish-Greek border.

Sabetara says he was coerced into driving it into Greece and transporting the seven other people found inside. In September 2022, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for smuggling in a trial that campaigners have said was unfair and Sabetara did not fully understand.

His daughter Mahtab Sabetara is now focussed on raising awareness for an appeal trial that starts on Monday in Thessaloniki and calling attention to the plight of other asylum seekers apparently in the same position.

“I found it quite shocking to go through this myself and figure out that this is the destiny of many people who are now in prison because of the same allegations,” Mahtab Sabetara told Al Jazeera over the phone from Germany, where she lives.

“I thought it would be, of course, a good thing to do for my father, so that we can raise awareness for his trial but at the same time to shed light on some other cases which are not very well known.”

Mahtab Sabetara said she hopes to push for a larger political change.

“It’s not just an isolated thing. It’s a systematic problem which affects many people and which is directly related to Europe’s migration policies,” she said.

“I always make this example: When the war in Ukraine started and people in Germany, for example, went to the Polish borders and took some people in their cars, those people were never called smugglers. The point was that these people were doing a moral thing.”

She added that in her view, “most of the people who are being called smugglers are actually people on the move themselves, and in many cases, the fact is that they didn’t have any other choice.”

Mahtab Sabetara said that since her father’s arrest, he has struggled to fully understand what is happening to him and why he is in jail.

“He fled Iran at a moment where he did not have any other alternatives. He never thought that this would be the outcome.”

The European Commission has made tackling smuggling one of its top priorities and in 2023 proposed legislation that it said would go after the people smugglers.

“We are stepping up the fight against migrant smuggling and protecting the people from falling into the hands of criminals,” European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said in November. “We are going after the smugglers, not the smuggled.”

Rights campaigners, however, have long argued that innocent people invariably get caught up in this crackdown, pointing to cases across Europe in which refugees and migrants have faced significant jail time for being found at the wheel of a boat or a car after being forced into the position.

Dimitris Choulis from the Human Rights Legal Project, a legal aid organisation, will be one of the lawyers representing Homayoun Sabetara in court.

“The first hope is to have a fair trial, a trial where all the procedural laws will be respected, and secondly is for Homayoun to go out of prison and be reunited with his family,” he told Al Jazeera.

Choulis, who is based on the Greek island of Samos, one of the main sea arrival points for refugees and migrants in Greece, said he has seen several cases of asylum seekers being wrongly accused of smuggling.

“The exceptional thing in this case is that Homayoun’s two family members have found the tools and the strength to fight injustice,” he said.

“It’s very important to understand that all these people have names and have families – to understand that they are not just statistics.”

A 2023 report by Borderline Europe, an NGO, noted that people convicted of smuggling form the second largest group in Greek prisons, of whom about 90 percent are foreign nationals.

It said being the only person in a group who spoke English is sometimes the reason people found themselves charged.

Erik Marquardt, a member of the European Parliament for the Greens/European Free Alliance who commissioned the report, alleged in a statement sent to Al Jazeera that the Greek government is “knowingly misusing laws” designed to combat trafficking to “persecute and punish those who flee to its shores in search of protection”.

“This dangerous strategy of deterrence is not about punishing criminals, it’s about criminalising migration. The Greek government puts people in prisons whose only crime is to seek asylum in Europe and in doing so, it is attacking its own rule of law and endangering its democracy,” he said.

Greek ministers have consistently defended a “strict but fair” migration policy and spoken of the importance of tackling people smuggling and smuggling networks to protect Greece’s borders.

At the time of publishing, Greek authorities had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Mahtab Sabetara, meanwhile, continues to campaign for her father’s acquittal, recalling a man full of humour who she used to play chess with.

“He’s a very positive person,” she said. “Or he used to be a very positive person.”

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Europe endured record number of ‘extreme heat stress’ days in 2023 | Climate Crisis News

New report warns people are increasingly at risk in a continent warming twice as fast as the global average.

Europe is increasingly facing bouts of heat so intense that the human body cannot cope, climate monitors have warned.

The continent endured a record number of “extreme heat stress” days in 2023, the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday.

In writing its latest report, Copernicus and the WMO noted last year’s extreme conditions, including a July heatwave that pushed 41 percent of southern Europe into strong, very strong or extreme heat stress – the biggest area of Europe under such conditions in any day on record.

The continent also suffered catastrophic flooding, severe droughts, violent storms and its largest ever forest fires.

“We’re seeing an increasing trend in the number of days with heat stress across Europe and 2023 was no exception, with Europe seeing a record number of days with extreme heat stress,” said Rebecca Emerton, a climate scientist at Copernicus.

For its latest study, Copernicus and WMO used the Universal Thermal Climate Index, which measures the effect of the environment on the human body.

It takes into account not just high temperatures but also humidity, wind speed, sunshine and heat emitted by the surroundings.

The index has 10 different categories of heat and cold stress, with units of degrees Celsius representing a “feels-like” temperature.

Parts of Spain, France, Italy and Greece experienced as many as 10 days of extreme heat stress in 2023, defined as a “feels like” temperature of more than 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Farenheit), at which point immediate action must be taken to avoid conditions such as heat stroke.

Extreme heat poses particular risks to people who work outdoors, the elderly, and those with health conditions such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

Parts of Italy recorded 7 percent more deaths than normal last July. A 44-year-old man painting road markings in the northern town of Lodi was among those who died after he collapsed at work.

“We see that there is excess mortality when we see such extreme heatwaves like was the case in 2023,” said Alvaro Silva, a climatologist from WMO.

“This increase in mortality… is affecting [the] big majority of European regions. This is a big concern.”

Red Cross workers check on the welfare of a homeless man during a heatwave in Rome last July [Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters]

Heat-related deaths in Europe have soared by about 30 percent in the past 20 years, the report said.

For the world as a whole, last month was the warmest March ever, marking the 10th straight month of historic heat as greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from fossil fuels, continued to push temperatures higher.

The surface temperature of the world’s oceans, which absorb 90 percent of excess heat produced by emissions, also hit a new high, according to Europe’s climate monitoring agency.

In their latest report, scientists warned Europe was warming twice as fast as the global average and that heatwaves were likely to become longer and more powerful in future.

“Current heatwave interventions will soon be insufficient to deal with the expected heat-related health burden,” the report said, noting that Europe’s population was ageing while also becoming increasingly urban.

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 788 | Russia-Ukraine war News

As the war enters its 788th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, April 23, 2024.

Fighting

  • One person was killed and four others were injured in Russian shelling in the town of Ukrainsk, according to the prosecutor’s office in the partially-occupied Donetsk region. In the Odesa region, four people were injured in a Russian missile attack, Governor Oleh Kiper said.
  • Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Bohdanivka in the Donetsk region. Bohdanivka is located just to the west of the Russian-occupied city of Bakhmut.
  • The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, in its evening report, mentioned Bohdanivka as one of a series of villages where it said Ukrainian forces repelled 13 enemy attacks. It gave no specific details.
  • Ukraine’s Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said the navy had struck and damaged the Kommuna, a Russian rescue vessel, in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea. The Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol said Russian forces had repelled an antiship missile attack on one of its vessels in the port, and that there was a small fire.

Weapons

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the US House of Representatives’ passage of a long-delayed bill to provide $61bn in foreign aid for Ukraine and urged the United States to quickly turn the bill into law and start the transfer of weapons.
  • European Union foreign ministers will meet in Luxembourg on Monday to discuss bolstering Ukraine’s air defences.
  • Global military spending rose by 6.8 percent to an all-time high of $2.4 trillion, driven by conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Russia boosted spending by 24 percent, reaching $109bn in 2023, according to SIPRI’s estimates. Ukraine’s military spending rose by 51 percent, reaching $64.8bn, while it also received $35bn in military aid from its allies, mostly the US.

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Zelenskyy welcomes US aid to Ukraine, urges rapid transfer of weapons | Russia-Ukraine war News

Ukraine president says the passage of the aid bill would send a powerful message to Russia that the US stands by Kyiv.

Ukraine’s president has welcomed the passage of $60bn in military aid for his country by the US House of Representatives and urged Washington to quickly turn the bill into law and proceed with the transfer of weapons.

“I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

The president said that the bill “will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger”.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press programme, Zelenskyy said the passage of the aid bill would send a powerful message to Russia that Washington stands by Kyiv and that it would not be “a second Afghanistan”.

“I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine and we will have a chance for victory,” Zelenskyy said through an interpreter.

He repeatedly urged US lawmakers to take swift action to pass the bill in the Senate. He said Ukraine urgently needed US long-range weapons including ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) and air defence systems to fight off the invasion by Russia that began in February 2022.

“This is crucial. These are the priorities now,” Zelenskyy said.

On Saturday, the US House of Representatives, with broad bipartisan support, passed a $95bn legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Aid for Ukraine had been held up for months, because of the opposition of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who urged Republican lawmakers to block it.

Russia has said US lawmakers’ support for Ukraine showed that Washington was wading much deeper into a hybrid war against Moscow that would end in humiliation on a par with the Vietnam or Afghanistan wars.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was clear that the US wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” including with attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians.

“Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for the United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said.

Russia, she added, will give “an unconditional and resolute response”.

Almost 26 months since the start of the invasion, Russia is slowly advancing in eastern Ukraine and has ramped up its bombardments of cities and towns behind the front lines amid a slowdown in Western military assistance.

The US legislation now proceeds to the Democratic-majority Senate, which passed a similar measure more than two months ago. US leaders, from Democratic President Joe Biden to top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, had been urging Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring it up for a vote.

The Senate is set to begin considering the bill on Tuesday, with some preliminary votes that afternoon. Final passage is expected sometime next week, which would clear the way for Biden to sign it into law.

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Kiptum remembered in Kenya’s London Marathon double | Athletics News

Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir and Alexander Mutiso Munyao won the women’s and men’s elite races on a poignant day at the London Marathon.

Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir won the London Marathon in a women’s-only world record as Alexander Mutiso Munyao’s victory in the men’s race made it a Kenyan double.

The race on Sunday was preceded by 30 seconds of applause for Kelvin Kiptum, 2023 winner of the men’s race, who was killed in a car accident in February.

The poignant day ended with Jepchirchir in particular putting down a marker ahead of her title defence at the Paris Olympics.

The field for the women’s race was considered one of the best ever assembled, with three of the four fastest women in history competing.

The 30-year-old Kenyan came home in front of world record holders Tigst Assefa and Joyciline Jepkosgei to break the record mark without male pacemakers.

Jepchirchir’s time of 2 hours 16 minutes 16 seconds smashed the women’s-only course record of 2:17:01 set by compatriot Mary Keitany in 2017.

“I was not expecting to run a world record,” said Jepchirchir. “I knew it might be beat, but I did not expect it to be me.

“I am so happy to qualify for the Olympics and I feel grateful. I’m happy to be at Paris and my pray[er] is to be there and run well to defend my title. I know it won’t be easy but I’ll try my best.”

Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir crosses the finish line to win the women’s elite race [Matthew Childs/Reuters]

In the men’s race, Munyao delivered another win for Kenya on a day when the London Marathon remembered last year’s champion: Kiptum, who was killed in a car crash in Kenya in February.

Kiptum’s countryman and friend ran alone down the final straight in front of Buckingham Palace to earn an impressive victory in his first major marathon.

Mutiso Munyao said he spoke to Kiptum after his win in London last year and that the world record holder is always on his mind when he’s competing.

“He’s in my thoughts every time, because he was my great friend,” Mutiso Munyao said. “It was a good day for me.”

A moment’s applause was observed in tribute to Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum before the start of the men’s elite race [John Sibley/Reuters]

Mutiso Munyao denied 41-year-old Kenenisa Bekele a first victory in the 42km (26.2-mile) London Marathon by pulling away from the Ethiopian great with about 3km (1.9 miles) to go Sunday for his biggest career win.

Mutiso Munyao and Bekele were in a two-way fight for the win until the Kenyan made his move as they ran along the River Thames, quickly building a six-second gap that only grew as he ran toward the finish.

“At 40 kilometers (25 miles), when my friend Bekele was left [behind], I had confidence that I can win this race,” the 27-year-old Mutiso Munyao said.

He finished in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 1 second, with Bekele finishing 14 seconds behind. Emile Cairess of Britain was third, 2:45 back.

Bekele, the Ethiopian former Olympic 10,000 and 5,000-metre champion, was also the runner-up in London in 2017, but has never won the race.

Mutiso Munyao is relatively unknown in marathon circles and said he wasn’t sure whether this win would be enough to make Kenya’s Olympic team for Paris.

“I hope for the best,” he said. “If they select me I will go and work for it.”

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