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Venezuela spikes EU asylum applications
By EUobserver
First-time asylum applications to the 28 EU countries, Norway, and Switzerland jumped 10 percent to 337,200 for the six months of this year compared to the same period in 2018, the European Asylum Support Office, an EU agency in Malta, has said. Most applications came from Afghanistan, Syria, and Venezuela. But EU states issued just 41,700 decisions in the first half of this year, their slowest rate in years.