Chinese President Xi Jinping has found one country in Europe that isn’t worried about China’s growing global clout or its ambitions to dominate the future of technology: Monaco.

Xi visited the tiny Mediterranean principality Sunday as part of a European tour that is clouded by mixed feelings about how to engage with China and benefit from its trade — while setting limits on its appetite for greater economic and diplomatic influence.

Xi’s appearance alongside Monaco’s Prince Albert and Princess Charlene marks the first state visit by a Chinese president to the principality. The palace said Monaco is seeking to boost its trade and economic cooperation with China, without providing details on eventual contracts to be signed.

Monaco last year clinched a deal with Chinese tech company Huawei to develop its 5G telecommunications network — a thorny issue for several European countries.

The U.S. government says Huawei’s 5G network could give Chinese security services a backdoor to spy on consumers, and has pressed European partners to shun it. Huawei says the fear is unfounded.

Monaco banned all flights in its airspace during Xi’s brief visit and any sailing in its waters or mooring in its luxury yacht-filled harbor.

The Chinese leader will dine Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron in the French Mediterranean resort town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. A police boat and police divers worked to secure the area before his arrival, and security cordons blocked several roads in Nice, where Xi will stay overnight.

Xi will sign energy and other contracts with Macron on Monday, then meet in Paris on Tuesday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The European Union is China’s biggest trading partner, but many in Europe worry about unfair competition from Chinese companies that benefit from government financial backing.

Xi comes to Monaco and France from Italy, which just endorsed a vast Chinese transport infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative. Macron criticized Italy’s move, calling for a concerted European approach to China instead.

“There is this bad European habit to have 28 different policies, with countries competing against each other to attract investment,” a top French official said. “We need to speak with a common voice if we want to exist. We have the same approach on the 5G issue: avoiding 28 different decisions.”

 
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Rescue helicopters airlifted 479 people from a disabled cruise ship off Norway’s western coast before it regained engine power Sunday and was escorted by three vessels to the nearby port of Molde.

Twenty people were injured in the ordeal as the Viking Sky ship tossed in winds gusting to 38 knots and rough seas with eight-meter waves.  When the cruise ship regained power, 436 guests and 458 crew members remained on board.

The Norwegian Red Cross said those injured sustained broken bones and cuts.

The Viking Sky crew issued a mayday call Saturday as the engines failed with the ship within 100 meters of striking underwater rocks and 900 meters offshore.

Passengers reported horrifying scenes on the swaying ship.

One American passenger, Rodney Horgen, 62, of Minnesota, said he knew something was very wrong when the guests were all brought to the ship’s muster point.  The Associated Press reported that Horgen was certain the end was nigh when a huge wave crashed through glass doors and swept his wife, Judie Lemieux, 10 meters across the floor.

“When the windows and door flew open and the two meters of water swept people and tables 20 to 30 feet, that was the breaker.  I said to myself, `This is it,” Horgen recalled.  “I grabbed my wife but I could not hold on.  And she was thrown across the room.  And then she got thrown back again by the wave coming back.”

“I was afraid,” Janet Jacob, one of the first passengers to be air-lifted, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.  “I have never experienced anything so scary.”

“The evacuation is proceeding with all necessary caution,” operator Viking Ocean Cruises said on its website before the ship regained power.

Most of the passengers on the ship were from the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
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Prime Minister Theresa May faces growing pressure from within her own party either to resign or to set a date for stepping down as a way to build support for her Brexit agreement with the European Union, British media reported Sunday.

Senior Conservative Party figures were urging May to recognize her weakened political position and leave the prime minister’s post. However, there was no indication from Downing Street a resignation was near.

May thus far has been unable to generate enough support in Parliament for the withdrawal deal her government and the EU reached late last year. Lawmakers voted down the Brexit plan twice, and May has raised the possibility of bringing it back a third time if enough legislators appear willing to switch their votes.

The U.K.’s departure from the EU long was set to take place on March 29, but the absence of an approved divorce agreement prompted May last week to ask the leaders of the 27 remaining member nations for a postponement.

The leaders rejected May’s request to extend the deadline until June 30. Instead, they agreed to delay Brexit until May 22, on the eve of EU Parliament elections, if the prime minister can persuade Parliament to endorse the twice-rejected agreement.

If she is unable to rally support for the withdrawal agreement, the European leaders said Britain only has until April 12 to choose between leaving the EU without a divorce deal and a radically new path, such as revoking the decision to leave the bloc or calling another voter referendum on Brexit.

Parliament may take a series of votes this week to determine what proposals, if any, could command majority support.

Conservative Party legislator George Freeman tweeted Saturday night that the U.K. needs a new leader if the Brexit process is to move forward.

“I’m afraid it’s all over for the PM. She’s done her best. But across the country you can see the anger. Everyone feels betrayed,” Freeman tweeted. “This can’t go on. We need a new PM who can reach out & build some sort of coalition for a Plan B.”

Under Conservative Party rules, May cannot face a formal leadership challenge from within her own party until December because she survived one three months ago. But she may be persuaded that her position is untenable if Cabinet ministers and other senior party members desert her.

Her bid for fresh support for her withdrawal plan has so far failed to win backing from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which usually provides crucial votes for May’s minority government.

She also faces pressure from groups demanding a second Brexit referendum. Huge crowds turned out Saturday for an anti-Brexit protest march in London. Organizers claimed more than 1 million people attended.

 
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A cruise ship that broke down in rough seas off the western Norwegian coast with more than 1,300 passengers and crew on board has restarted three of its four engines and will be towed to port, emergency services said Sunday.

“Three of the four engines are now working, which means the boat can now make way on its own,” emergency services spokesman Per Fjeld said.

The Viking Sky lost power and started drifting midafternoon Saturday about two kilometers (1.2 miles) off More og Romsdal in dangerous waters and high seas, prompting the captain to send out a distress call and trigger a massive airlift operation.

Passengers hoisted off one by one

That sent rescue workers rushing to evacuate the passengers and crew by helicopter, winching them one-by-one to safety as heaving waves tossed the ship from side to side and high winds battered the operation.

The airlift continued into the early morning, Fjeld said. And police said 338 of the 1,373 people on board had been taken off by helicopter.

Police in the western county of Moere og Romsdal said the crew managed to anchor in Hustadvika Bay, between the Norwegian cities of Alesund and Trondheim, so the evacuations could take place.

Rescue teams with helicopters and boats were sent to evacuate the cruise ship under extremely difficult circumstances, including gusts up to 38 knots (43 mph) and waves more than 8 meters (26 feet). The area is known for its rough, frigid waters. 

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said the Viking Sky’s evacuation was a slow and dangerous process, as passengers needed to be hoisted one-by-one from the cruise ship to the five available helicopters.

“I was afraid. I’ve never experienced anything so scary,” Janet Jacob, among the first group of passengers evacuated to the nearby town of Molde, told NRK. 

Police said that 17 people had been taken to hospital, including, NRK said, one 90-year-old-man and his 70-year-old spouse who were severely injured but did not say how that happened.

The majority of the cruise ship passengers were reportedly British and American tourists. 

‘Just chaos’

Video and photos from people on the ship showed it heaving, with chairs and other furniture dangerously rolling from side to side. Passengers were suited up in orange life vests but the waves broke some ship windows and cold water flowed over the feet of some passengers. 

American passenger John Curry told NRK that he was having lunch as the cruise ship started to shake.

“It was just chaos. The helicopter ride from the ship to shore I would rather not think about. It wasn’t nice,” Curry told the broadcaster.

Once the vessel was able to restart the engines, it began making slow headway at 2 to 3 knots (4-5 kilometers) an hour off the dangerous, rocky coast and a tug will help it toward the port of Molde, about 500 kilometers northwest of Oslo, officials said.

Later, reports emerged that a cargo ship with nine crew members was in trouble nearby, and the local Norwegian rescue service diverted two of the five helicopters working on the cruise ship to that rescue. 

Authorities told NRK that a strong storm with high waves was preventing rescue workers from using lifeboats or tug boats to take passengers ashore.

Fjeld said rescuers were prioritizing the nine crew members aboard the Hagland Captain cargo ship, but later said they had all been rescued and the helicopters had returned to help the Viking Sky.

The cruise ship was on a 12-day trip that began March 14 in the western Norwegian city of Bergen, according to the cruisemapper.com website. 

Agence France Presse contributed to this report.
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