Turkey’s Foreign Minister Melvin Cavusolgu is hosting his Russian and Iranian counterparts at the Mediterranean Sea resort of Antalya to prepare the ground for Wednesday’s summit in Russia to discuss Syria.

Despite Ankara backing opposing sides to Tehran and Moscow in the Syrian civil war, they have been increasingly cooperating to resolve the conflict. The three countries armed forces are deployed in creating a “de-escalation zone” in the Syrian enclave of Idlib, one of last strongholds of rebels fighting the Damascus regime.

Despite growing cooperation, the countries competing agendas are increasingly coming to the fore with the imminent defeat of Islamic State and rebel forces in the Syrian civil war. The meeting Sunday in Antalya is seeking to ease, if not resolve, those differences before the summit.

The hastily arranged summit came out of disputes over Moscow’s plan to hold a Syrian conference. Reportedly Tehran is unhappy at Moscow hosting the event, while Ankara was enraged over an invitation being extended to the Syrian Kurdish militia the PYD. Ankara accuses the militia of being linked to a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.

But shared opposition to Washington’s policy in the region is providing a powerful impetus to ongoing cooperation between the three countries. “The ‘zeitgeist’ or spirit of times, forces the countries not to go into confrontation but cooperation,” said international relations professor Huseyin Balci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. The United States arming of PYD forces in their fight against the Islamic State continues to deeply strain relations with its NATO ally Turkey.

PYD controversy

U.S.-Turkish differences over the PYD, are increasingly dictating Turkish foreign policy. “At the moment all of Ankara’s priorities have been put in the Kurdish basket,” notes political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website, ”and that seems to be the guiding motive, whether its relations with Russia and also its relations with Iran.”

Cavusoglu is expected to press his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during talks in Antalya to agree to allow Turkey to launch a military operation against the PYD forces in the Syrian Afrin enclave. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing party supporters Sunday, promised a military operation would be launched to “liberate” Afrin.

In the past few days, Turkey has been reinforcing its forces in the Syrian enclave of Idlib that borders Afrin. But with Russian soldiers deployed in Afrin, Moscow’s agreement to any attack is seen as crucial by Ankara.

Moscow is competing with Washington for influence over the Syrian Kurdish forces. “Russia has its own contacts to Kurdish politicians in the region,” observes Zaur Gasimov an Istanbul-based Russia-Turkey analyst for the Max Weber Foundation, “but [Moscow] is very concerned on pro-American mood among most Kurdish politicians.” Analysts suggest Russia may view the threat of Turkish military action as important leverage to persuade Syrian Kurds to realize Moscow, rather than Washington, is the most useful ally.

NATO relations

But Ankara’s courting of Moscow and Tehran is raising questions among its NATO partners. Turkish NATO relations received another blow, Friday, when Turkey withdrew its forces participating in a military drill in retaliation for slights made to Erdogan and the founder of the Turkish State Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, by other soldiers participating in the exercise.

The incident continues to reverberate in Turkey. Erdogan Sunday dismissed an apology by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg describing its as “halfhearted.”

Reportedly Stoltenberg said those soldiers responsible for the slight had been dismissed. Anger against NATO is being whipped up in the Turkish media and has created a rare consensus in Turkey’s deeply polarized world.

Kemal Kilicdarolgu, leader of the main opposition CHP, joined in the condemnation of NATO. While Turkey’s Culture Minister Numan Kurtulmus described the incident as an example “anti-Islamic and anti-Turkey phobia.”

NATO and in particular the United States are viewed with deep suspicion among many Turks, and analysts point out such verbal attacks offer politicians an easy opportunity to score points with the electorate. With Turkey due to hold general and presidential elections by 2019, polls that are predicted to be close, the growing anti-Western nationalist rhetoric and policies are seen likely to continue. “Foreign policy in Turkey under the ruling AKP Party, it really has become an extension of domestic policy,” observes political columnist Idiz.

In such a political climate the NATO controversy could have far reaching effects, ”Turkey currently has more than one serious problem with the U.S., the locomotive force of NATO,” warned Murat Yetkin editor of Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, “these problems are causing a rift between the two countries, prompting both Americans and Turks to question the long-running alliance between their countries.”

 
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The Turkish capital Ankara has banned the public showing of films and exhibitions related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, the governor’s office said on Sunday, citing risks to public safety.

The move is likely to deepen concern among rights activists and Turkey’s Western allies about its record on civil liberties under President Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party.

“Starting from Nov. 18, 2017, concerning our community’s public sensitivity, any events such as LGBT… cinema, theatre, panels, interviews, exhibitions are banned until further notice in our province to provide peace and security,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

It said that such exhibitions could cause different groups in society to “publicly harbour hatred and hostility” toward each other and therefore pose a risk to public safety.

Authorities in Ankara had already banned a German gay film festival on Wednesday, the day before it was due to start, citing public safety and terrorism risks.

In addition, gay pride parades have been banned in Istanbul for the last two years running. Unlike in many Muslim countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey, but there is widespread hostility to it.

Civil liberties in Turkey have become a particular concern for the West following the attempted military coup in July 2016.

Since then, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial on suspicion of links to the coup. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs.

Human rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies fear Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to quash his opponents. Ankara says the measures are necessary, given the extent of the security threat it faces.
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Gerry Adams, the divisive politician known around the world as the face of the Irish republican movement as it shifted from violence to peace, announced Saturday that he was stepping down as leader of Sinn Fein next year after heading the party for over 30 years.

The 69-year-old veteran politician — who has been president of Northern Ireland’s second-largest party since 1983 — told the party’s annual conference in Dublin he would not run in the next Irish parliamentary elections.

“Leadership means knowing when it is time for change and that time is now,” he said, adding the move was part of an ongoing process of leadership transition within the party.

A divisive figure, some have denounced Adams as a terrorist while others hail him as a peacemaker.

He was a key figure in Ireland’s republican movement, which seeks to take Northern Ireland out of the U.K. and unite it with the Republic of Ireland.

The dominant faction of the movement’s armed wing, the Provisional IRA, killed nearly 1,800 people during a failed 1970-1997 campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the U.K. It renounced violence and surrendered its weapons in 2005.

Although many identify Adams as a member of the IRA since 1966 and a commander for decades, Adams has long insisted he was never a member.

Adams was key in the peace process that saw the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the formation of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

Many believe Sinn Fein’s popularity among voters is hampered by the presence of leaders from Ireland’s era of Troubles.

The party is expected to elect a successor next year. Current deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald was seen as a favorite to succeed Adams.
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Fotis Kafatos, a Greek molecular biologist who had a distinguished academic career in both the United States and Europe and became the founding president of the European Research Council, has died. He was 77.

His family announced his death in Heraklion, Crete, on Saturday “after a long illness.”

Born in Crete in 1940, Kafatos was known for his research on malaria and for sequencing the genome of the mosquito that transmits the disease.

He was a professor at Harvard University from 1969 to 1994, where he also served as chairman of the Cellular and Developmental Biology Department, and at Imperial College in London since 2005. He had been an adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health since 2007.

Kafatos was also a part-time professor at the University of Crete in his hometown since 1982. He also was the third director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, a life sciences research organization funded by multiple countries, from 1993 to 2005.

Kafatos considered the 2007 founding of the European Research Council under the auspices of the European Commission as his crowning achievement. The council funds and promotes projects driven by researchers. He stepped down as president in 2010.

He came to be disillusioned by the heavily bureaucratic rules that, in his mind, hampered research.

“We continuously had to spend energy, time and effort on busting bureaucracy roadblocks that kept appearing in our way,” Kafatos told scientific journal Nature soon after he left the post. But, he added, “We delivered to Europe what we promised.”
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Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation Saturday of two U.S. prosecutors involved in putting a Turkish-Iranian businessman on trial for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, according to Turkey’s official news agency.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said it was investigating Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Bharara’s successor, acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim.

A statement from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the sources of the documents and wiretaps being used as evidence in the U.S. case against gold trader Reza Zarrab were unknown and violated international and domestic laws.

Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency published the statement Saturday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

Zarrab, 34, has been charged in the U.S. with allegedly evading sanctions on Iran. An executive of Turkey’s state-owned bank, Halkbank, also faces charges and is due to appear in court in New York on November 27.

Former Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan is also among the nine defendants indicted in the case.

Bharara denies Gulen link

Turkish officials allege the case is politically motivated. They have accused Bharara, the former U.S. attorney, of links to a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turkish government blames for a failed July 2016 military coup.

Bharara has vehemently rejected the allegation. Gulen denies involvement in the coup attempt.

The U.S. case was built on work initially performed by Turkish investigators who targeted Zarrab in 2013 in a sweeping corruption scandal that allegedly led to Turkish government officials.

Turkish prosecutors and police involved in the investigation were removed from duty, and charges that resulted from their probe were later dropped.

Since the July 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has arrested more than 50,000 people and fired over 100,000 state workers for alleged links to Gulen’s network.
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Russia has again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended an international probe into chemical weapons use in Syria, one day after it rejected a similar resolution.

Japan had put forward a resolution that would have extended the investigation to identify who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria by 30 days to allow time for negotiations on a wider compromise.

On Thursday, the United States sponsored a similar resolution with a yearlong extension that was also vetoed by Russia.

Russian proposal fails

A separate Russian draft resolution Thursday that called for changes to the international investigation failed to get enough votes to pass, with just four countries supporting it. The Russian proposal included changes to the mandate that the United States opposed.

Without passage of any extension, the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) expired Thursday at midnight.

Friday’s veto by Russia was the 11th time Russia vetoed a resolution on Syria.

After Friday’s vote, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the council: “Russia has no interest in finding common ground with the rest of this council to save the JIM. Russia will not agree to any mechanism that might shine a spotlight on the use of chemical weapons by its ally, the Syrian regime. It’s as simple and shameful as that.”

Haley offered “sincere apologies” to the “families of the victims of chemical weapons in Syria and the Syrian children, women and men who may be victims of future attacks.”

She added: “Know that the United States, along with the rest of this council, will not give up on seeking justice for your lost loved ones and protection for your families. Know that Russia can obstruct this council, but it cannot obstruct the truth.”

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the inquiry could only be extended if “fundamental flaws in its work” were fixed.

Series of attacks

The Joint Investigative Mechanism began its work more than two years ago after a series of chemical weapons attacks against civilians in Syria that killed or caused agony to hundreds.

The U.N. investigators have blamed the Syrian government for using the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack and for several times using chlorine as a weapon. It blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas.

Syria’s government says terrorists, its word for the opposition, are responsible for all the attacks.

Russia, which is Syria’s most powerful ally, has supported investigations into chemical weapons but criticized the reports as being unfair to the Syrian government.
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The U.S. State Department approved a possible $10.5 billion sale of Raytheon Co’s Patriot missile defense system to Poland, the Pentagon said on Friday. NATO member Poland has sped up efforts to overhaul its military following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and in response to Moscow’s renewed military and political assertiveness in the region.

Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said in March that Poland expected to sign a deal with Raytheon to buy the Patriot missile defense system by the end of the year.

Patriot missile defense interceptors are designed to detect, track and engage unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles and short-range or tactical ballistic missiles.

Support services part of deal

The proposed sale includes 208 Patriot Advanced Capabilty-3 (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhancement missiles, 16 M903 launching stations, four AN/MPQ-65 radars, four control stations, spares, software and associated equipment.

In addition, Poland is authorized to buy U.S. government and contractor technical, engineering and logistics support services as well as range and test programs for a total estimated potential program cost of up to $10.5 billion.

A Raytheon representative said “it is Raytheon’s experience that the estimated cost notified could be larger than the final negotiated contract amount,” signaling that the final price could be lower as negotiations on a final amount proceed.

Raytheon added that it “will work closely with the U.S. and Polish governments to ensure Poland is able to procure Patriot at a mutually agreeable price.”

NATO allies have same system

The Pentagon said the sale will take place in two phases.

If a deal is finalized, it would allow Poland to conduct air and missile defense operations with NATO allies the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Greece, which currently have the Patriot system, a U.S. State Department official said.

The contract still requires approval from the U.S. Congress, because it involves a purchase of advanced military technology for which special permission must be obtained.

Poland, which had said it was planning to spend around $7.6 billion on the whole project, said the negotiations are not over.

“This does not mean that this amount ($10.5 billion) is the final value of the LOA (Letter of Offer and Acceptance),” the Polish Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding it has a “good track record” in negotiating similar offers.

Lawmakers can block sale

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements foreign arms sales, said it had delivered notification to Congress on Tuesday.

U.S. lawmakers have 30 days to block the sale, but that rarely happens.

In addition to Raytheon, the prime contractors will be Lockheed Martin Corp and Northrop Grumman.

 
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Greek police clashed with hooded youths in Athens on Friday after thousands marched to mark a bloody 1973 student uprising that helped topple the military junta which then ruled the country.

More than 10,000 people marched peacefully to the embassy of the United States, which some Greeks accuse of having supported the seven-year military dictatorship. About 5,000 police were deployed in the streets of central Athens.

At the tail-end of the demonstration, hooded youths hurled stones and petrol bombs at police in the Exarchia district in central Athens, often the setting for such clashes. Police used teargas to disperse them.

Earlier on Friday, Greeks laid flowers at the Athens Polytechnic University to honour those killed during the revolt.

The junta collapsed less than a year later.

The annual protest often becomes a focal point for protests against government policies and austerity measures mandated by the country’s international lenders in exchange for bailout funds. The crisis that broke out in 2010 has left hundreds of thousands of people unemployed.

Protesters held banners reading: “We will live freely” and “No pensioner will be fired!”

After seven years of belt-tightening Greeks hope that they will emerge from lenders’ supervision in August 2018, when the country’s third international bailout expires. Many of them accuse a political elite of driving the country to bankruptcy.
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Rescue crews were searching Friday for six people missing from deadly flash floods that killed at least 16 near Athens, as new storms hit the Greek capital.

The fire department, which had been searching since Thursday for four missing people, said two more people were reported missing Friday in the district of Mandra, on the western outskirts of Athens. 

Wednesday’s flash floods, which came after an overnight storm, turned roads into raging torrents of mud that flung cars against buildings, inundated homes and businesses and submerged part of a major highway.

The flooding is one of the worst disasters to have hit the Athens area in decades. More bad weather, with heavy rainfall and storms, lashed the capital Friday, flooding a central road in the Keratsini area west of Athens, cutting off traffic.

The fire department said it had received 910 calls for help in the western areas of the capital since Wednesday morning to pump water from flooded buildings and transport people to safety. It said its crews rescued 96 people trapped in vehicles and homes.

The repeated storms led to another 70 calls for help to the fire department in other areas of the Greek capital and the nearby island of Aegina on Friday, and hundreds more from towns in northern Greece.
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Ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and four members of his cabinet are expected to appear before a Belgian court Friday for a hearing in connection with a European arrest warrant issued by Spain.

The court will hear arguments behind closed doors from prosecutors and lawyers for the Catalan ex-officials, before it considers whether to extradite them to Spain, where they would face charges of rebellion and sedition for their roles in region’s independence drive.

Madrid issued the warrant for Puigdemont and the four ex-ministers after they fled to Brussels last month and ignored a summons to appear before a Spanish judge, claiming they would not get a fair trial.

Spanish authorities had removed Puigdemont and his 13-member Cabinet from office for pushing ahead with secession.

Friday’s court appearance will be the first hearing in what could become a protracted courtroom battle, with both sides expected to appeal the outcome.

The judge is expected to give an initial ruling in eight to 10 days.

Under current Belgian law, a decision on a European arrest warrant should be made within 60 days.

That means that Puigdemont and his associates could still be in Belgium when Catalonia goes to the polls Dec. 21 for an early election ordered by Madrid to “restore normality” in Catalonia, Spain’s northern wealthiest region.
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Mafia “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina has died in the hospital while serving multiple life sentences as the mastermind of a bloody strategy to assassinate Italian prosecutors and law enforcement trying to bring down the Cosa Nostra, Italian media reported Friday. He was 87.

Riina died hours after the Justice Minister had allowed his family members bedside visits Thursday, which was his birthday, after he had been placed in a medically induced coma. Italian media said his health had deteriorated following two recent surgeries.

26 life sentences

Riina, one of Sicily’s most notorious Mafia bosses, was serving 26 life sentences for murder convictions as a powerful Cosa Nostra boss. He was captured in Palermo, Sicily’s capital, in 1993 and imprisoned under a law that requires strict security for top mobsters, including being detained in isolated sections of prisons with limited time outside their cells.

Prosecutors accused Riina of masterminding a strategy, carried out over several years, to assassinate Italian prosecutors, police officials and others who were going after Cosa Nostra when he allegedly held the helm as the so-called “boss of bosses.”

The bloodbath campaign ultimately backfired on Cosa Nostra.

Crackdown

After bombs killed Italy’s two leading anti-Mafia magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two months apart in 1992, the state stepped up its crackdown on Sicily’s Mafiosi. 

Riina was captured in a Palermo apartment six months after Borsellino and his police escorts were killed by a car bomb. A native of Corleone, a Sicilian hill and Mafia stronghold, he steadfastly refused to collaborate with law enforcement after his capture.

Riina was incarcerated at a Milan prison before his hospitalization. In July, a court denied a request by Riina’s family to transfer the convicted mobster to house arrest because of his ailing health.
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After widespread allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the first evidence is emerging of possible attempts by Moscow to influence Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union. Researchers have identified tens of thousands of social media accounts that promoted anti-EU messages or sought to whip up political and racial tensions.  Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Thousands of traumatized children in foster care in Britain go missing, with some returning to traffickers who feed them “a web of lies”, charities said on Thursday, urging better protection.

UK children’s charity Barnado’s said on Thursday that 16 percent of children referred to its fostering network had been sexually exploited or abused, and 17 percent were trafficked.

“It is well known that there is a greater risk of trafficked children going missing from care but too often processes are not put in place to protect children,” its chief executive Javed Khan said in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Children are threatened, manipulated and controlled by their traffickers who feed them a web of lies leading them to fear authorities,” he said, adding that many vanish within days.

More than 50,000 children in England are in foster care, Department of Education statistics show, with thousands disappearing more than once.

Children may abscond because they feel unsafe or isolated, particularly if they do not speak English.

Some contact their traffickers because they fear reprisals against themselves or their families, have been made false promises or believe they have debts to pay, experts say.

Anti-child trafficking organization ECPAT UK said its research showed 28 percent of all trafficked children in care went missing at least once. Vietnamese children were most likely to abscond, often re-enslaved in nail bars or cannabis farms.

More than 150 Vietnamese children rescued from traffickers in Britain have disappeared from care and foster homes since 2015, charities said last month.

Having been in various foster homes from the age of three, British survivor Sarah said she was trafficked for sex at the age of 12 by a gang in England.

“I was alone and vulnerable … I saw them as people who cared about me,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference on Wednesday, using a false name.

“For the next seven years I was sold every day to many different men,” she said, adding that her school, social services and other authorities failed to see her plight.

Charities have called for specialist foster carers to be trained to look after trafficked children and for the setting up of safe houses with high levels of support and supervision.

“It is vitally important that foster carers are offered the support and training they need to be able to look after highly traumatized young people,” said a spokesman for Fostering Network, a charity that supports foster carers in Britain.

At least 13,000 people across the country are estimated by the government to be living in modern slavery but police say that the true figure is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

The government has said it is introducing a scheme to give trafficked children specialist advocates or guardians who could provide support and reduce re-trafficking risks.

 
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At least 3,000 people formed a chain of light in Vienna on Wednesday to protest against the formation of a government that includes the far-right Freedom Party.

Demonstrators holding flickering candles, torches and bicycle lamps encircled the capital’s government district.

“Our republic’s most powerful political offices should be exclusively reserved for trustworthy people who are not in the slightest connected to right-wing extremists,” said Alexander Pollak, spokesman for SOS Mitmensch, one of several human rights groups which organized the demonstration.

It was the biggest protest in Austria since coalition talks between the conservative People’s Party (OVP) and the Freedom Party (FPO) started two weeks ago.

Organizers estimated the number of people taking part at 8,000 to 10,000, the police at around 3,000.

“We are here because they (the FPO) feed hatred and want to divide people,” said Brigitte Griesser, holding a candle.

But the protest was far smaller than unrest 17 years ago, when the FPO last formed a government with the OVP and more than 100,000 took to the streets.

“[The shift to the right] has become a European trend… it’s no longer just an Austrian issue and that’s why it is not that controversial any longer,” said protester Juergen Pucher.

 
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French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Europe to fill a funding void left by Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Macron was among world leaders speaking at a climate meeting in Germany that has left Washington isolated.

Macron said European governments and the private sector must ensure funding for the main U.N. scientific body, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also called on nations to accelerate their energy transition, and said France would close all its coal plants before 2022.

Rich nations have imposed their universe on the world, Macron said of greenhouse emissions — it is forbidden to impose the tragedy it may create, he added.

France and Germany are leading the push to accelerate emission cutting promises reached by world leaders in Paris two years ago. This latest meeting in Bonn aims to draw up the rules for executing the 2015 climate pact, aimed at limiting global warming to under two degrees Celsius from 1990s levels.

New findings show the world already has reached the one-degree mark. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said his recent visit to Caribbean islands devastated by hurricanes provided him with a glimpse of what the future could hold.

“Floods, fires, extreme storms and droughts are growing in intensity and frequency and are increasing everywhere,” he said. “Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are higher than they have been for 800,000 years. Climate change is the defining threat of our time.”

Speaking on behalf of African nations, President Ali Bongo of Gabon said his continent was paying the price for rising CO2 emissions, as rising seas swallow up its coastlines and threaten agricultural production and food security.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the bottom of the mountain,” he announced. “And we must dare to climb it, rather than continuing to hope that the rising floods will not reach us.”

With Syria joining the Paris climate pact this week, the Trump administration is now alone in opposing it, although it cannot fully withdraw from the agreement for several years. Macron is hosting another Paris summit next month, and so far he hasn’t invited President Trump.

Washington has sent a small delegation to Bonn, but hecklers booed an event hosted by the White House that defended the continued use of fossil fuels.
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Poland’s government hit back Wednesday after the European Parliament launched action over concerns that the right-wing government in Warsaw has compromised the independence of the judiciary and risks breaching fundamental European values.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo described the events in the Parliament — where a bitter debate preceded the vote — as “scandalous.” The Foreign Ministry called the resolution a “political instrument of pressure on Poland,” describing the document as “one-sided” and saying it was based on political considerations and not on legal analysis.

In a resolution adopted by 438 to 152, with 71 abstentions, the European lawmakers triggered the first stage of a so-called rule-of-law procedure against the Polish government on Wednesday.

The procedure could lead to the suspensions of Poland’s EU voting rights.

The assembly’s Civil Liberties Committee must now draw up a legal proposal to formally request that the mechanism — known as Article 7 — be activated due to a “clear risk of a serious breach” of EU values.

The EU’s executive, the Commission, has already launched a procedure of its own amid concerns that new laws in Poland undermine judicial independence and the rule of law.

The vote came after a heated debate that exposed the bitter feelings between European officials trying to keep Poland on a democratic course and Polish officials who argue the ruling party has a democratic mandate to change its own country’s court system and that Brussels has no right to interfere in the affairs of sovereign nations.

Ryszard Legutko, a member of Poland’s ruling party, accused the EU of waging an illegal “crusade against Poland.” He also accused the German media, which have criticized Poland’s direction, of holding an “anti-Polish orgy.”

In turn, others sharply criticized Poland’s government, with the parliament’s liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt saying the Polish government “has lost its senses.” Gianni Pittella, leader of an alliance of Socialists and Democrats, accused Warsaw of showing “scorn for liberal democracy.”

Several also criticized a march of 60,000 people in Warsaw that was organized by extremist far-right groups and included racist banners and slogans on Poland’s Independence Day on Saturday. Poland’s president sharply condemned the expressions of extremism, but the government leaders have praised the event as a celebration of Polish patriots.

Frans Timmermans, the vice president of the European Commission, said that some of “most terrible parts of European history” were “seen on the streets of Warsaw.”

The parliament’s resolution called on Poland to act on several points, including to strongly condemn what it called a “xenophobic and fascist march.”

Janusz Lewandowski, a member of Poland’s opposition Civic Platform party, sharply criticized the ruling party on several points, saying it was “committing abuse of power” and tolerating “racism, xenophobia and neo-fascism on Poland’s streets.” His words drew an angry retort from Legukto.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said Poland was “shocked” by the language of the debate, saying it qualified as “hate speech” at times; and the prime minister, Szydlo, said “politicians who defame their country in an international forum do not deserve to represent it.”

Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
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Germany on Tuesday pledged $125 million to boost the work of an international insurance partnership that aims to cover 400 million more poor and vulnerable people against disaster risks by 2020.

That goal was first set in 2015 by the G7 group of wealthy nations, but the effort has now been expanded to bring in other partners, including the World Bank and an alliance of about 50 countries vulnerable to climate threats, including small island states like Fiji, which is presiding over the talks in Bonn.

In July, Britain contributed 30 million pounds ($39.4 million) to establish a Center for Global Disaster Protection.

Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, said that when powerful Cyclone Winston hit his nation last year, wiping out 30 percent of its economy, tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and many households were uninsured.

“People protected by their wealth have no idea of the heartbreak of the poor and most vulnerable when they lose their homes and livelihoods in climate-related disasters,” he told an event to launch the partnership.

Fiji needs new forms of finance to develop while also reducing the risks of weather extremes and rising seas to tourism, forests, fisheries and agriculture, as well as to infrastructure, much of which is exposed on the coast, he said.

The InsuResilience Global Partnership will develop and roll out innovative finance and insurance solutions for individual countries tailored to the needs and challenges of their poor people in particular, it said.

Those will include sovereign risk pools like the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), which has paid out $62 million to 10 Caribbean countries since hurricanes Irma and Maria brought destruction to the island states in September.

Using the additional funds announced Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Bonn, the global partnership will also aim to expand schemes such as the NWK Agri-Services cotton company in Zambia, which offers weather and life insurance to small contract farmers and is already backed by InsuResilience.

In 2015, some 52,000 farmers bought insurance, of whom more than 23,000 received payments after a major drought in 2016.

Allen Chastanet, prime minister of St. Lucia, said the CCRIF had proved to be “an amazing asset,” enabling quick access to funds after a disaster. But it was just as important to provide money to help Caribbean nations adapt to climate change to help prevent catastrophic losses, he said.

“Insurance is not dealing with the overall solution. It is dealing with the symptom, not the actual cause,” he said.

Aid agencies working in developing countries to reduce the risks of disasters said the partnership must also look at ways to help vulnerable communities prepare better for climate threats, besides providing insurance.

“Insurance doesn’t actually reduce risk, and it could be unaffordable for the communities it’s meant to cover,” said Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam’s delegation at the Bonn conference.

“No other choice”

Ibrahim Thiaw, deputy executive director of UN Environment, said the expansion of insurance could help bring down its costs, as has happened in Africa with mobile phones, which are now almost everywhere.

“Insurance is booming around climate. It will grow because people have no other choice. They need that buffer to protect themselves,” he told a separate discussion.

The group of climate-vulnerable countries working with InsuResilience, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Costa Rica, are also working on their own schemes, such as the planned Sustainable Insurance and Takaful Facility, which is based on the principles of Islamic finance.

It aims to close the gaps in insurance protection and disaster risk reduction for its member states’ 1 billion people, only 14 percent of whom have access to some form of risk cover.

Members would contribute to a fund that pays out when a disaster hits, as well as supporting adaptation and green projects, said Sara Jane Ahmed of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities. The facility aims to start work next year.

This week, the U.N. climate change secretariat also launched an online platform under the Paris climate agreement that will use artificial intelligence to connect countries seeking innovative insurance solutions with the expertise they need.

U.N. Climate Chief Patricia Espinosa said the new efforts would bring together those working to prevent climate disasters and help allay damage across the international community.

“Failing to plan for climate impacts is a huge risk,” she said, noting how Hurricane Irma had recently left Barbuda uninhabited for the first time in 300 years while persistent drought is displacing people in Africa’s Sahel region, contributing to the migration crisis in Europe.

“It is in our best collective interest to build resilient societies,” she added.
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President Emmanuel Macron says the French government itself fueled homegrown Islamic extremism by abandoning its poorest neighborhoods — and he’s promising tough and “sometimes authoritarian” new measures to combat radicalization.

Macron unveiled a multibillion-euro plan Tuesday to help France’s troubled banlieues — suburban regions where crime flourishes and job opportunities are scant, especially for minorities with origins in former French colonies.

More than 5 million people live in France’s poorest neighborhoods, where unemployment is 25 percent — well above the nearly 10 percent national average. For those under 30, the prospects are even worse — more than a third are officially unemployed.

Macron’s answer is to provide grants for poor youths to launch startups, double the funding for public housing, expand child care, improve public transport in isolated or poor neighborhoods, offer subsidies for companies that hire disadvantaged youth and hire more local police officers.

Macron’s predecessors also spent billions to try to fix the banlieues, and failed. But he’s undeterred, and says the stakes are increasingly high.

“Radicalization took root because the state checked out” and abdicated its responsibilities in impoverished neighborhoods, Macron said — leaving extremist preachers to fill the void.

Radical recruiters argued “I will take care of your children, I will take care of your parents … I will propose the help that the nation is no longer offering,” Macron said.

Several extremist attackers who have targeted France in recent years were raised in troubled French social housing. The head of domestic French intelligence agency DGSI, Laurent Nunez, said Tuesday that nearly 18,000 people in France are on radicalism watch lists, a growing number.

Macron said his government will present about 15 measures to fight radicalization and will close “unacceptable structures” that promote extremism and “try to fracture us.”

Macron spent three hours Monday talking to residents in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb where the death of two boys fleeing police led to weeks of nationwide riots in 2005, an eruption of anger over discrimination, isolation and joblessness.

On Tuesday, he visited Tourcoing in northern France, taking selfies with residents and promoting local technology entrepreneurs.

Labeled by critics as the “president of the rich” for his business-friendly economic vision, Macron insisted Tuesday that his strategy will only succeed if companies hire minorities and the poor.

He promised measures to name and shame companies found to discriminate when hiring, to ensure help for teenagers seeking internships, and to include poor youths in French technology incubators.

Some proposals are small but significant, such as state aid to keep libraries open later, so young people have a safe place to be after dark in dangerous neighborhoods.

 
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When exactly will Britain leave the European Union?

Parliament started hours of debate Tuesday by arguing over when the two-year negotiating period for Brexit should end and whether there should be a fixed time at all.

It was just the first day of what promises to be a lengthy set of debates in Parliament on Prime Minister Theresa May’s blueprint for leaving the EU — debates that will challenge her diminished authority and could force changes to her Brexit plan.

Her absence Tuesday on another engagement suggested she was not unduly worried by the initial discussion.

But the debate’s ill-tempered tone showed the level of anger in a Parliament emboldened since May lost her Conservative Party’s majority in a June election and was forced to garner the support of a small Northern Irish party to be able to pass legislation.

With catcalls, sarcastic jokes and jeers being bandied about — not just between the two main parties, as is the custom, but often within them — some lawmakers took issue with the government’s plans to quit the EU at 11 p.m. on March 29.

One, from the opposition Labor Party, said Britain should leave the EU on March 30, 2019, preferring midnight British time to the government’s proposal to leave an hour earlier — which would be midnight in Brussels.

That was determined to be “technically deficient” by the government minister on the opposite side of the House of Commons, who said any amendment trying to move the exit date and time threatened to push Britain into “legal chaos” if the country’s statute book were not in order when it leaves.

“As a responsible government we must be ready to exit without a deal, even though we expect to conclude a deep and special partnership [with the EU],” he told Parliament.

Divisions exposed

Behind the debate is the fear of pro-Brexit lawmakers that Britain may never leave the EU, and of pro-EU lawmakers who fear that by setting any firm date, Britain will have no flexibility in talks with the bloc and might end up with no deal.

Another debate later Tuesday was to look at the interpretation of EU law.

The debates go to the heart of what parliament calls “one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK.”

The process of transposing EU law into British law could not only reopen the divisions exposed when Britons voted in June 2016, by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin, to quit the EU, but also further undermine May’s already fragile authority.

May has lost two ministers to scandals and her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, is facing calls to resign over remarks he made about a jailed aid worker in Iran. The Sunday Times has reported that 40 Conservatives support a no-confidence vote.

The prime minister has tried to ease tensions by offering lawmakers some concessions on the bill, but still faces more divisive debates that could go against her.
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France’s domestic intelligence chief says nearly 18,000 people are on French watch lists for radicalism, a growing figure.

Laurent Nunez, head of the DGSI agency, is also warning that the Islamic State group’s retreat in the Middle East “doesn’t weaken the level of threat” or diminish the extremists’ ability to inspire violent attacks in the West via propaganda.

Speaking on RTL radio Tuesday, he said “the wish of the Islamic State group and al-Qaida to launch an attack is intact,” though the current risk to France comes from homegrown extremists instead of those who come from foreign war zones.

Nunez said that of the nearly 18,000 on watch lists, some 4,000 are under active surveillance. A number of people who have carried out attacks in France in recent years had previously been flagged for radicalism.
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Twenty-three member states of the European Union have signed a historic deal to cooperate more closely on defense. The deal – known as Permanent Structured Cooperation or PESCO – legally binds its signatories into joint defense projects and increased spending. Britain, one of the bloc’s biggest military powers, has long resisted such moves, but its departure from the bloc has persuaded other members to press ahead. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Madrid believes Russian-based groups used online social media to heavily promote Catalonia’s independence referendum last month in an attempt to destabilize Spain, Spanish ministers said Monday.

Spain’s defense and foreign ministers said they had evidence that state and private-sector Russian groups, as well as groups in Venezuela, used Twitter, Facebook and other Internet sites to massively publicize the separatist cause and swing public opinion behind it in the run-up to the Oct. 1 referendum.

Catalonia’s separatist leaders have denied that Russian interference helped them in the vote.

“What we know today is that much of this came from Russian territory,” Spanish Defense Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal said of Russian-based internet support.

“These are groups that, public and private, are trying to influence the situation and create instability in Europe,” she told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers in Brussels.

Asked if Madrid was certain of the accusations, Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis, also at the meeting, said: “Yes, we have proof.”

Dastis said Spain had detected false accounts on social media, half of which were traced back to Russia and another 30 percent to Venezuela, created to amplify the benefits of the separatist cause by re-publishing messages and posts.

Ramon Tremosa, the EU lawmaker for the PDeCat party of Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, repeated on Monday that Russian interference had played no part in the referendum.

“Those that say Russia is helping Catalonia are those that have helped the Russian fleet in recent years, despite the EU’s boycott,” Tremosa tweeted, referring to Spanish media reports that Spain was allowing Russian warships to refuel at its ports.

Those who voted in the referendum opted overwhelmingly for independence. But turnout was only about 43 percent as Catalans who favor remaining part of Spain mainly boycotted the ballot.

The separatist vote has plunged Spain, the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy, into its worst constitutional crisis since its return to democracy in the 1970s.

Dastis said he had raised the issue with the Kremlin.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any such interference and accuses the West of a campaign to discredit Russia.

Information warfare?

NATO believes Moscow is involved in a deliberately ambiguous strategy of information warfare and disinformation to try to divide the West and break its unity over economic sanctions imposed on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia interfered in the U.S. election to try to help President Donald Trump defeat rival Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing emails and spreading propaganda via social media.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who attended the EU meeting in Brussels, declined to comment on Spain’s accusations, but the alliance’s top commander said last week that Russian interference was a concern.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander General Curtis Scaparotti said “Russian malign influence” was trying to sway elections and other decisions in the West, describing it as a “destabilization campaign,” although he did not directly address the Catalonia referendum.
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The next World Economic Forum of world leaders and CEOs in Davos will be chaired by women including International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and IBM’s chief executive Ginni Rometty.

The seven co-chairs for the four-day event in January were announced in the face of criticism that the conference has in the past lacked female representation.

“Co-chairs… were chosen to reflect global stakeholders,” said a spokeswoman for WEF, adding the co-chairs were all leaders in their fields.

The co-chairs shape the program and lead discussions and panels. The theme of the 48th conference is to “explore the root causes of, and pragmatic solutions for, the manifold political, economic and social fractures facing global society,” WEF said.

WEF, in an annual report this month, found it will take another 217 years before women earn as much as men and have equal representation in the workplace, revealing an economic gap of 58 percent.

It is the second straight year the Swiss non-profit has recorded worsening economic inequality.

A typical representative of the more than 2,500 titans of industry and influence that each January descend upon the Alps has received the unofficial moniker of “Davos Man” — a sign of the further shift in representation and thinking still necessary to balance uneven gender dynamics.

Other co-chairs are Isabelle Kocher, head of French energy conglomerate Engie; Italian physicist and director general of the CERN particle physics research centre Fabiola

Gianotti; founder of the rural cooperative Mann Deshi Bank for women, Chetna Sinha; and International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

Next year’s event will take place January 23-26, 2018.

 
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The United States is participating in the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement it will be leaving the Paris Climate Accords.

The State Department says a U.S. delegation is participating in the conference in Bonn, Germany.

A State Department statement Monday said, “The United States remains a Party in good standing to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and is participating in ongoing negotiations under the Framework Convention as well as the Paris Agreement, in order to ensure a level playing field that benefits and protects U.S. interests.”

The president announced in June the United States will leave the Paris climate agreement, which would obligate the United States to cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.

Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt have all questioned how much human activity has contributed to climate change.
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Irish musician and anti-poverty activist Bob Geldof returned his “Freedom of the City of Dublin” award to his hometown Monday, saying he cannot hold an honor also given to Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi.

“I am a very proud Dubliner but cannot in all conscience continue to be one of the honored few to have received this great tribute whilst Aung San Suu Kyi remains amongst that number,” Geldof said in a statement.

“In short, I do not wish to be associated in any way with an individual currently engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of North West Burma.”

Geldof is best known for organizing the 1985 “Live Aid” concert – reported to have been the biggest concert in the world, boasting multiple locations, and raising more than $104 million to combat hunger in Ethiopia.

Aung San Suu Kyi – a Nobel laureate – has come under fire internationally for failing to address what the U.N. has described as ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority Rohingya. More than half a million Rohingya have fled across the border to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar.

Fellow Nobel laureates, including the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, have also spoken out and called on her to say something to condemn the violence.

Aung San Suu Kyi initially maintained there had been “a huge iceberg of misinformation” about the plight of the Rohingya. She recently visited conflict-wracked northern Rakhine state, having come under pressure to halt a military crackdown. The operations were launched in response to attacks by Rohingya militants.
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Two former U.S. intelligence officials slammed President Trump Sunday for saying believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin “feels that he and Russia did not meddle” in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Former CIA director John Brennan, in an appearance on CNN with James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said Trump’s initial indication that he believed Putin shows “that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.”

Clapper said Russia poses and obvious threat to the U.S., and to suggest otherwise “poses a peril to this country.”

Trump was asked Saturday whether the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election came up in conversations with Putin in Vietnam where the two leaders attended an Asia-Pacific summit. Trump replied, “He said he didn’t meddle, he said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times.”

Trump went on to say, “That whole thing was set up by the Democrats” – slamming former United States intelligence leaders, including Brennan and Clapper.  

“They’re political hacks. So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have [James] Comey. Comey’s proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker,” he said, referring to the FBI’s former director, who was fired early in Trump’s presidency amid much controversy.

“So you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that,” Trump said.

Taking issue

Trump’s remarks brought immediate criticism on Saturday.

In a statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of the president from his own party, said, “There’s nothing ‘America First’ about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. … Vladimir Putin does not have America’s interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.”

But Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Saturday the president understands the truth about Russian interference, and is simply choosing to “accept” Putin’s denials “over the solid evidence of our own intelligence agencies.” 

“He understands all this and more. He just doesn’t understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with – Mr. Trump simply can’t bring himself to put America first,” Schiff said in a statement.

And Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) tweeted Saturday, “So my question is: which is the position of the U.S. government? POTUS or CIA?”

Hayden then tweeted, “CIA just told me: The Dir stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed.”

On Sunday, President Trump clarified that he meant Putin was sincere when denying that Russia did not meddle in the election.

“As to whether I believe it, I’m with our agencies,” Trump said. “As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.”

Cooperation with Russia

Trump also reiterated his stance Sunday that “having Russians in a friendly posture, as opposed to always fighting with them, is an asset to the world and an asset to our country, not a liability.”

Earlier Sunday, on his Twitter account, the president wrote: “Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button.  Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin.”

Trump told reporters on Air Force One as it flew from Danang to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi Saturday that a joint statement on Syria he agreed to issue with Putin is “going to save a tremendous number of lives.”

The statement, first released by the Kremlin, says the two leaders “confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce cease-fire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict.”

It also says that Putin and Trump “agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS.”

‘A very good relationship’

Putin told reporters in Danang Saturday the joint statement is one of extraordinary importance, confirming the principles of the fight against terrorism.

Trump said of the Russian leader “we seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we don’t know each other well. I think it’s a very good relationship.”

Trump also said the United States could be helped a lot by Russia on the North Korean nuclear issue.

“You know, you are talking about millions and millions of lives. This isn’t baby stuff, this is the real deal. And if Russia helped us in addition to China, that problem would go away a lot faster.”

But Trump said, concerning the North Korea nuclear and ballistic missile issue, “I did not speak to President Putin about it, because we just had these little segments where we were talking about Syria.”

Putin, in his remarks to the media, said, “We discussed all we wanted” at the APEC Summit, but unfortunately there was little time to speak in detail. He added that it would be good for Russian and American teams to sit down to talk about the whole breadth of the bilateral relationship.

Putin described Trump as a comfortable person, educated, and said he and the U.S. president were highly civil in their interactions.

RT retribution

The Russian leader warned, however, that action is likely to be taken against U.S. media in response to an American requirement that Russia’s RT media outlet register as a foreign agent in the United States.

Putin termed it an attack on free speech by the U.S. government, and he warned retaliatory measures will be proportionate and reciprocal.

CNN, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America have been mentioned by Russian officials and media reports as the most likely targets of the retaliation.

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and VOA House Correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.

 
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Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives has fallen to the lowest level in more than six years, according to a poll on Sunday, as they prepare for more talks on a coalition deal with the environmentalist Greens and a pro-business party.

The weekly Emnid survey for Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed only 30 percent would vote for Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc if there were a federal election this Sunday, down 1 percentage point.

This is the lowest reading for the conservatives in this survey since October 2011 and marks a slump in support since the Sept. 24 election, in which Merkel’s bloc won 32.9 percent.

Merkel’s conservatives, who bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the election, are trying to forge a three-way coalition government with Greens and the pro-market Free Democrats (FDP) – an alliance untested at the national level.

At a meeting later on Sunday party leaders are expected to discuss progress made so far in exploratory talks and try to overcome their remaining differences over climate, immigration and euro zone policy.

The meeting is due to start at 1500 GMT in Berlin and no statements are planned after the talks.

While politicians from the CDU/CSU and the FDP have cited progress after three weeks of exploratory talks, senior Greens voiced frustration and stepped up the pressure on Merkel.

“We see no goodwill at all on Europe, foreign and domestic policy, on affordable housing and good working conditions, on transport and agriculture transition,” Greens co-leader Cem Ozdemir told Bild am Sonntag.

Touching on one of the thorniest issues, Merkel said on Saturday that Germany should lead the fight against climate change and cut emissions without destroying industrial jobs.

Merkel’s comments, made in her weekly podcast in the middle of talks on limiting global warming attended by about 200 nations in the western German city of Bonn, highlighted the dilemma facing the center-right leader in the negotiations.

While the CUD/CSU and the FDP want to spare companies from additional burdens, the Greens want to spell out which measures the next government will implement for Germany to reach its 2020 goal of lowering emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels.

Due to strong economic growth and higher-than-expected immigration, Germany is at risk of missing its emissions target without any additional measures.

Merkel wants to have an agreement in principle by Nov. 16 on moving ahead to formal coalition negotiations to form a black-yellow-green government – also dubbed a “Jamaica coalition” because the parties’ colors match those of that country’s flag.

With less than a week to go, the exploratory coalition talks are not only complicated by the differences between the parties, but also by splits within the political parties themselves e€“ especially within the conservatives and Greens.

A breakdown of the talks could mean fresh elections in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, since the Social Democrats (SPD) – the second biggest party – have made clear they have no appetite for joining another ‘grand coalition’ under Merkel.
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The Kremlin said on Sunday that inflexibility on the part of the United States was to blame for the lack of a bilateral meeting between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Vietnam.

Trump and Putin met briefly on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam on Saturday and agreed on a joint statement supporting a political solution for Syria, but did not hold substantive bilateral talks.

“Unfortunately the American side did not offer any alternatives despite all efforts of our Russian colleagues.

There was only one time offered that was convenient for the American side, and only one place offered, which had already been rented by the Americans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.

“The Americans showed no flexibility, and unfortunately did not offer any other alternative proposals. That is why the meeting could not happen,” Peskov added.

Putin himself said on Saturday the lack of a bilateral meeting with Trump in Vietnam was due to both leaders’ schedules and protocol obstacles that their teams had been unable to overcome.

Allegations that Trump’s election campaign colluded with Moscow last year to turn voters away from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have hampered the president’s efforts to improve frosty U.S.-Russian relations.

Putin renewed his denial of the allegations during his brief meeting with Trump on Saturday. Trump has previously said the accusations of collusion were a hoax.
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Iran’s nuclear deal is “not negotiable,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bassam Ghassemi said Saturday in response to remarks by the French president.

Emmanuel Macron called for vigilance toward Tehran over its ballistic missile program and regional activities, in an interview published Wednesday by the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad.

“We have told French leaders on several occasions that the Iran nuclear deal is not negotiable and that no other issues can be included in the text” of the 2015 agreement, state news agency IRNA quoted Ghassemi as saying.

France, the Foreign Ministry speaker said, is “fully aware of our country’s intangible position concerning the issue of Iran’s defensive affairs, which are not negotiable.”

In the interview with Al-Ittihad, published during Macron’s 24-hour visit to Abu Dhabi, the French president said: “It is important to remain firm with Iran over its regional activities and its ballistic program.”

Macron also said there was no immediate alternative to the Iranian nuclear deal — long lambasted by U.S. President Donald Trump — which curbs Iran’s nuclear program.

France has been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear, which Iran signed with six world powers — Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States.

On October 13, Macron told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a phone call that France remained committed to the deal.

But the French leader stressed it was also necessary to have a dialogue with Iran on other strategic issues, including Tehran’s ballistic missile program and regional security, a proposal ruled out by Iran.

Macron’s visit this week to Abu Dhabi came amid renewed tensions between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s nuclear deal saw sanctions imposed on Tehran lifted in exchange for limits on its atomic program.
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Spanish authorities said they rescued 251 migrants, including children, on Saturday who were making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.

The people were saved “from five improvised vessels, all in the Alboran Sea,” Spain’s maritime safety authorities said on Twitter, referring to the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea.

The number of migrants arriving by sea on Spanish shores has soared over last year, with the figure nearly tripling to 15,585 in 2017 by November 8, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Many Africans undertaking the long route to Europe are choosing to avoid crossing danger-ridden Libya to get to Italy along the so-called central Mediterranean route, and choosing instead to get there via Morocco and Spain.

However, Spain is still well behind Italy, which has recorded 114,400 arrivals by sea since since the start of the year.

Since January, nearly 15,600 migrants have made it to Spain by sea, with 156 dying during the crossing, according to the IOM.

The agency estimates that 155,850 migrants have made the dangerous crossing to Europe this year and another 2,961 died or went missing while trying.
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