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A radical plan to transform Switzerland’s financial landscape by barring commercial banks from electronically creating money when they lend was resoundingly rejected by Swiss voters on Sunday.

More than three quarters rejected the so-called Sovereign Money initiative, according to the official result released from the Swiss government.

All of the country’s self-governing cantons also voted against in the poll, which needed a majority from Switzerland’s 26 cantons as well as a simple majority of voters to succeed. Concerns about the potential risks to the Swiss economy by introducing a “vollgeld” or “real money” system appear to have convinced voters to reject the proposals.

The Swiss government, which had opposed the plan because of the uncertainties it would unleash, said it was pleased with the result.

“Implementing such a scheme, which would have raised so many questions, would have been hardly possible without years of trouble,” Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said.

“Swiss people in general don’t like taking risks, and …the people have seen no benefit from these proposals. You can also see that our banking system functions…The suspicions against the banks have been largely eliminated.”

The vote, called under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy after gathering more than 100,000 signatures, wanted to make the Swiss National Bank (SNB) the only body authorized to create money in the country.

Contrary to common belief, most money in the world is not produced by central banks but is instead created electronically by commercial lenders when they lend beyond the deposits they hold for savers.

This arrangement, underpinned by the belief that most debts will be repaid, has been a cornerstone of the global capitalist system but opponents say it is unstable because the new money created could exceed the rate of economic growth, which could lead to inflationary asset bubbles.

If approved, Switzerland, famed for its banking industry, would have been the first country in the world to introduce such a scheme, leading opponents to brand the plan a dangerous experiment which would damage the economy.

The plan could have had repercussions beyond Switzerland’s borders by removing a practice which underpins most of the world’s bank lending.

Support for reform had grown in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, with campaigners saying their ideas would make the financial system more secure and protect people’s savings from bank runs.

As well as the Swiss government, opposition came from the Swiss National Bank and business groups.

“We are pleased, this would have been an extremely damaging initiative,” said Heinz Karrer, president of business lobby Economiesuisse.

The SNB acknowledged the result, saying adoption of the initiative would have made it much harder to control inflation in Switzerland.

“With conditions now remaining unchanged, the SNB will be able to maintain its monetary policy focus on ensuring price stability, which makes an important contribution to our country’s prosperity,” it said in a statement.

Campaigners – a group of academics, former bankers and scientists – said they would continue to work on raising their concerns.

“The discussion is only just getting started,” said campaign spokesman Raffael Wuethrich. “Our goal is that money should be in the service of the people and not the other way around and we will continue to work on it.” 
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There will be no Winter Olympics in Switzerland in 2026.

Voters in the southern canton of Valais rejected a proposal Sunday to bid on the games that would have been centered in the Swiss city of Sion.

Voters apparently balked at the high cost the canton would have had to put up to host the games — an estimated $101 million.

Supporters of the bid say it was a “reasonable and sustainable” project and that the games would have brought billions into the local economy.

Two other Swiss regions had also rejected hosting the games in earlier referendums.

With Switzerland out of the running, the International Olympic Committee will likely choose between Turin and Milan, Italy; Graz, Austria; Erzurum, Turkey; Calgary in Alberta, Canada; Sapporo, Japan; and Stockholm to host the 2026 Winter Games.

A decision is expected in September 2019.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that he’s happy to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump once Washington is ready to hold the summit and welcomed Trump’s call to bring Moscow back into the G-7 group of leading industrialized nations.

Speaking to reporters in Qingdao, China, Putin said that some nations, including Austria, have offered to host his summit with Trump, should they have one.

“The U.S. president has repeatedly said that it’s reasonable to hold such a meeting,” Putin said on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. “As soon as the U.S. side is ready, the meeting will take place, depending, of course, on my working schedule.”

Putin said he shares Trump’s expression of concern about a renewed arms race expressed in a March phone call.

“I can confirm that President Trump voiced concern about a new round of arms race in our latest call,” Putin said. “I fully agree with him,” he said, adding that personal meetings and work by experts are needed to tackle the issue.

Putin’s remarks follow a report that White House officials were working toward setting up a meeting. Trump has said he was open to having a summit with Putin, who U.S. intelligence officials have said directed Russian meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

The American leader has repeatedly said he wants to improve relationships with Moscow.

Putin also welcomed Trump’s statement that Russia should be invited to rejoin the group that was called the G-8 before others expelled Russia.

“It wasn’t us who left,” he said. “Colleagues refused to come to Russia on well-known grounds.”

“We will be ready to greet them all in Moscow,” he added.

Russia was expelled from the grouping in 2014 after it invaded and annexed Crimea and for its support for pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine. Trump, however, suggested that the G-7 offer a seat at the table to Russia.

“I think it would be an asset to have Russia back in,” he said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he told Trump that readmitting Russia “is not something that we are even remotely looking at at this time.”

Putin also dismissed as mere “chatter” a G-7 statement that criticized Russia.

The statement had said: “We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing behavior to undermine democratic systems and its support of the Syrian regime.” It also said the countries shared and agreed with Britain’s assessment that it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain.

“Once again, nothing concrete was said,” Putin said, referring to the G-7 statement. “It’s time to stop that chatter and deal with real issues.”

Earlier Sunday, Putin criticized the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal in a speech at the summit.

He emphasized that the bloc’s members, who also include China, four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations, as well as India and Pakistan, are worried about the U.S. move.

Putin said that Washington’s decision to exit the agreement could “destabilize the situation” in the region. He added that Moscow will continue to honor its obligations under the Iranian nuclear deal.

Last month, Trump pulled out of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s landmark 2015 nuclear accord with Iran over the objections of European allies and other nations.

Addressing the summit, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose country has an observer status in the group, said that Iran would expect other participants in the nuclear deal to provide guarantees that they would honor the agreement.

Founded in 2001, the Beijing-based SCO has largely served as a vehicle for resolving border issues, fighting terrorism and — more implicitly — to counter American influence in Central Asia following its invasion of Afghanistan.
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Britain’s biggest companies will from 2020 be legally required to publish the gap between the salaries of their chief executives and what they pay their average U.K. workers, under proposed government rules.

Business Minister Greg Clark said that the government would set out new laws in Parliament on Monday directing that U.K.-listed companies with more than 250 employees would have to reveal their pay gaps and justify their CEOs’ salaries.

“We understand the anger of workers and shareholders when bosses’ pay is out of step with company performance,” Clark said in a statement Sunday.

He said the new laws would improve transparency and boost accountability for both shareholders and workers, as well as helping to “build a fairer economy.”

The new measures, which are subject to parliamentary approval, are part of the government’s “Industrial Strategy” and would come into effect January 1, 2019, meaning companies would start reporting in 2020.

When these rules were first proposed last year, they were criticized by union leaders, who said they fell short of Prime Minister Theresa May’s promise early on in her tenure to tackle soaring executive pay.

‘Unacceptable face’ of capitalism

She came to power after the 2016 Brexit vote vowing to tackle what she called the “unacceptable face” of capitalism, including pay gaps and mismanaged takeovers, which had driven a wedge between British bosses and their workers.

But some campaigners and investors have questioned whether the greater transparency provided by disclosures about boss-to-worker pay ratios would be enough to force companies to curb pay excesses.

Matthew Fell, chief U.K. policy director at the Confederation of British Industry, a British employers group, said that the new legislation would help develop a better dialogue between boards and employees.

“What’s most important is that all businesses make progress towards fair and proportionate pay outcomes,” he said.

While Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Center, a think tank, said the insight into pay ratios would be useful to investors, workers and wider society.

“We hope that it will initiate a more informed debate about what represents fair, proportionate pay for workers at all levels,” he said.

The plan to make public the worker-to-boss pay gap comes after May has already implemented rules to highlight pay discrepancies between genders.

Earlier this year, all U.K. companies with 250 or more employees had to publish details of the salary difference between male and female employees. They will report back annually on that pay gap.
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Police in the Kurdistan region of Iraq said Saturday that a 20-year-old

Iraqi man had admitted killing a 14-year-old girl in Germany, where the case has stoked the immigration debate.

The body of Susanna Feldman, of Mainz, near Frankfurt, was found Wednesday in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, near a refugee center where the alleged attacker had lived, German police said.

An autopsy showed she had been the victim of a violent and sexual attack. Feldman was Jewish, but police said there was no evidence her religion had been a factor in the attack, and the Central Council of Jews in Germany

cautioned against attributing any anti-Semitic motive.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Kurdish security forces had taken the suspect, identified by German authorities as Ali Bashar, into custody Friday.

“Officers in Zakho [in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region] called me and said they had located the suspect and would arrest him as soon as he comes to the city,” Dohuk city police chief Tariq Ahmed told Reuters. “He had been staying at a hotel in Dohuk and after realizing the police were after him left for Zakho to stay at a relative’s house. He was asleep there at night and was arrested in that house at 5:30 [a.m.],” Ahmed said.

Confession

He said the suspect, during interrogation by Kurdish security authorities, had confessed to killing the German teenager. 

“The girl was a friend of his. They went on a trip to the woods and there they consumed a lot of alcohol and drugs, then got into a dispute and the girl tried to call the police,” Ahmed said. “The suspect became afraid because she was under 18 and he knew if the police came it would be a major charge.”

Ahmed added: “He tried to convince her not to call the police but she insisted, so he choked her and buried her beneath the dirt.”

German media reported earlier that Bashar was expected to be extradited to Germany on Saturday. German federal police declined to comment on the details emerging from the suspect’s arrest or on the report on the timing of extradition.

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her dismay at the crime and said it should be a reminder to Germans of the need to do whatever possible for the integration of immigrants.

“The incredible suffering experienced by the family, the victim, affects everyone, including me,” she said on the sidelines of a G-7 summit meeting in Canada.

“The cooperation in this regard between German and Kurdish security authorities worked well here. … It is good that the alleged perpetrator was caught, that he probably also will be returning to Germany,” Merkel said.

She added, “This is a reminder to all of us, first, to take the task of integration very seriously, to make our common values very clear, again and again. But also to punish any crime. We can only live together if we all stick to our laws.”

Merkel’s decision to take in large numbers of asylum seekers during Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis has stirred a political backlash, with many politicians calling for new rules to make it easier to deport immigrants.

Bashar had been living in Germany as a refugee since 2015, German media have reported.

German police set up a special call center for tips from the public and issued releases in Arabic and Turkish. They said on Thursday that Bashar had most likely fled to Irbil in the Kurdistan Regional Government.
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French President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policy is viewed as favoring the rich and must change to address inequalities, according to a memo written by three economists who worked on his campaign program, Le Monde newspaper said on Saturday.

The criticism is the latest sign of the trouble created by Macron’s economic reforms among the center-left supporters who propelled him to power last year.

In the confidential memo sent to Macron and plastered across Le Monde’s front page, the economists said his policy was failing to convince “even the most ardent supporters.”

“Many supporters of the then-candidate express their fear of a lurch to the right motivated by the temptation to steal the political space left vacant by a struggling conservative party,” the economists wrote.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, the Sciences Po Paris university professor who coordinated Macron’s economic program and is an influential voice in Franco-German academic circles, is one of the authors. He declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

The other two, Philippe Martin, a former Macron adviser who heads France’s Council of Economic Analysis (CAE), and Philippe Aghion of the elite College de France, did not return Reuters’ requests for comment.

Macron, who campaigned on a promise to be “neither left nor right”, moved swiftly in his first year to loosen labor rules and slash a wealth tax, earning himself the nickname “president of the rich.”

The economists said there was a risk the French would find these measures unfair and think the government is deaf to the needs of the poorest in society.

“The president must talk about the issue of inequalities and not leave this debate to his opponents,” the economists wrote.

Among proposals to reduce inequalities, the economists suggested a rise in inheritance tax for the richest, scrapping tax credits on property investments, and cancelling Macron’s promise to abolish a housing tax for the wealthiest 20 percent.

Macron’s office confirmed it had received the note, but said it did not foretell government policy. Macron is currently in Canada with other Group of Seven

leaders, locked in a battle over trade tariffs with U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Prince Harry and his new wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, joined the pageantry of the annual Trooping the Color ceremony Saturday in London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday.

The duke and duchess, who married three weeks ago, made the short trip from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade in a horse-drawn carriage as royal fans lining the Mall cheered and waved. After the event, the couple joined other members of the royal family on the palace’s front balcony to watch the Royal Air Force fly by.

The 92-year-old queen, who recently had a successful cataract operation, watched the ceremony from a dais and inspected the lines of guardsmen in bearskin hats and scarlet tunics who offered her tributes. Her husband, Prince Philip, has retired from royal duties and did not attend.

The ceremony originated from traditional preparations for battle. Flags, or colors, were “trooped” so soldiers in the ranks would be able to recognize them.

The Queen’s actual birthday is April 21.
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Pope Francis has told the world’s oil executives that a transition to less-polluting energy sources “is a challenge of epochal proportions.”

On the last day of a two-day conference Saturday, the Roman Catholic leader urged the executives to provide electricity to the one billion people who are without it, but said that process must be done in a way that avoids “creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future.”

Reuters reports the unprecedented conference was held behind closed doors at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The news agency says the oil executives, investors and Vatican experts who attended the summit, believe, like the pope does, that science supports the notion that climate change is caused by human activity and that global warming must be curbed.

Pope Francis told the conference, “Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.”

 
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Romania’s top court postponed on Friday a verdict in the trial in which the leader of the ruling Social Democrats stands accused of inciting other public servants to commit abuse of office, saying it needed more time to process details.

A fresh criminal conviction for Liviu Dragnea, who is already barred from becoming prime minister because of a previous conviction for vote-rigging, could weaken his grip on the country’s biggest party and the five-month old government.

Dragnea is accused of keeping two women on the payroll of a state agency in 2006-2013 even though they were employed by his party. He was a county council chief at the time.

Dragnea denies the charges.

The court said on Friday it will make a preliminary ruling on June 21. A final verdict may take months, analysts say.

Arguments about how to fight corruption in one of Europe’s most graft-prone states have dominated Romania’s politics since it joined the European Union just over a decade ago.

Adrian Basaraba, a political science professor at the University of Timisoara, said a second criminal conviction for Dragnea could prompt Social Democrat rivals to move against him.

“We may see some internal wars in the party … a fresh conviction would be a wonderful opportunity for some to say the current PSD leader has eroded his legitimacy too much to govern the biggest party,” he added.

Dragnea is also under investigation in Brazil on suspicion of  money laundering, and in a separate case in Romania on suspicion of forming a “criminal group” to siphon off cash from state projects, some of them funded by the European Union.

But the former regional development minister, who created a funding program for local infrastructure projects that has disbursed billions of euros since 2013 with limited government oversight, has the support of powerful provincial leaders.

At the start of 2017, attempts by Dragnea’s coalition government to weaken anti-corruption legislation triggered the country’s biggest protests in decades.

Romania has been dogged by political instability since shedding Communist rule in 1989, but investors have largely shrugged off the corruption cases so far.
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Spain’s new Socialist government said Friday it had lifted financial controls on Catalonia and would seek dialogue with the region’s administration to relieve tensions over an independence bid which pitched the country into political crisis.

Catalonia’s secessionist drive is one of the thorniest issues facing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after he toppled center-right premier Mariano Rajoy last week in a vote of no-confidence.

The financial controls, imposed by Rajoy ahead of last October’s independence referendum, meant that payments made by the Catalan government had to be scrutinized by the budget ministry in Madrid, which could exercise a veto.

“We want to restore normality, so with the constitution in one hand and dialogue in the other, we will try to make progress,” Isabel Celaa, the newly installed government spokeswoman, said after the new cabinet’s first meeting.

Sanchez will probably meet Catalan regional chief Quim Torra before the summer, she added, without elaborating.

The apparent olive branch to the regional government marks a change in tone from Rajoy’s hard line against the secessionists, which culminated in the imposition of direct rule, but it is not clear what Sanchez can offer Torra.

Heavily-indebted Catalonia will still have to provide information to the budget ministry to keep access to state funds it has relied on since being shut out of debt capital markets during an economic crisis that began to bite 10 years ago.

Torra has pledged to continue the independence campaign for which Spanish judges want to try his predecessor, Carles Puigdemont, who is currently awaiting the outcome of an extradition request in Germany.

Spain’s constitution states that the country is indivisible and Rajoy had argued that the October referendum was illegal.

The Socialists backed Rajoy’s imposition of direct rule on Catalonia and the nomination of a staunchly unionist Catalan politician as Spanish foreign minister has been seen as suggesting they do not plan to cut deals.

While drumming up support for the no-confidence motion that felled Rajoy, Sanchez had promised talks on the issue but remains opposed to Catalan independence.

Another referendum remains “absolutely out of the question,” Celaa said Friday.
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Kosovo has arrested two people, including a Belgian national, suspected of planning attacks on NATO troops and the public in Kosovo, Belgium and France, the state prosecutor said on Friday.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that on June 2 the pair, a man and a woman, spoke by telephone of preparing “terrorist attacks and commit suicide attacks with explosives with a car against KFOR (NATO-led Kosovo Force) soldiers in Kosovo and to attack places frequented by citizens.”

They were taken into custody on Wednesday.

The man, identified only as a 26-year-old Belgian national, was living with the woman, identified as a 25-year-old residing near the capital Pristina. According to the prosecution the man was also preparing suicide attacks in public places in Belgium and France.

“My client is suspected of preparing to commit terrorism acts … but I don’t agree with the prosecution because they have not offered any evidence to detain him,” said attorney Arber Rexha, who is representing the man.

A senior police officer told Reuters that the probe had been expanded and more suspects were being investigated.

The official said police were able to record telephone conversations between the suspects in which they were planning attacks.

The NATO mission told Reuters this was an issue for the Kosovo police.

NATO has some 4,500 soldiers in Kosovo helping to keep a fragile peace. The European Union and the United Nations also have security and diplomatic missions there.

Some 300 Kosovo nationals went Syria to fight for Islamic State and more than 50 have been killed there. This has raised concerns that some could return and pose security threats, Kosovo authorities said.

In May Kosovo court jailed eight men for plotting to attack the Israeli national soccer team in Albania in a World Cup qualifying match in 2016.
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As summer draws near in the Northern Hemisphere, millions of people will slather on sunscreen to protect themselves from the sun’s harmful rays. But most sunscreens contain chemicals harmful to the oceans. Now researchers in London have developed a compound found in seaweed that could be the basis for a new generation of environmentally friendly sunscreens. As VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, they may not only protect us from damaging rays from the sun but also act as an anti-oxidant.
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Ukraine’s parliament has voted to establish an anti-corruption court in an effort to meet the criteria to receive $17.5 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Before the IMF releases the funds needed to shore up Ukraine’s struggling economy, it will have make sure the court’s laws are IMF compliant. The West has repeatedly called on Ukraine to reform it political system and establish an independent body to fight corruption.

“What we’ll be looking to see is that it ensures the establishment of an independent and trustworthy anti-corruption court that meets the expectation of the Ukrainian people,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said at a briefing Thursday.

President Petrol Poroshenko said the court was in line with Western recommendations and Ukrainian law.  

Last year Poroshenko rejected the need for an anti-corruption court, saying such institutions are needed in “Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia and Croatia” but not in Western Europe or the United States.

While the approval of the court was seen as a positive, Ukraine also likely dismayed the West by firing Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, a respected reform advocate.

Danylyuk’s ouster came after he took on Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, accusing him of stalling reforms of the state tax service that are needed to combat corruption.

Before the parliament voted on his ouster, Danylyuk addressed the lawmakers, telling them he had been accused of “defending the interests of international organizations.”

But, “I am defending the interests of Ukrainians,” he said.
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When Daniel Essa fled Syria in 2014, he faced an uncertain future as a refugee in France, where he knew few people and less French. Now he is selling his own brand of luxury sneakers to the wealthy of Paris and Hollywood.

The 30-year-old studied fashion in Damascus but abandoned hopes of a career in his homeland and fled the war to settle in Lille, near the Belgian border.

His simple but chic leather sneakers with a strip of stretchy fabric rather than laces sell for an average price of 330 euros ($390).

Actress Whoopi Goldberg placed an order after spotting a prototype pair on a friend’s feet at a fashion show in the United States and asked who the designer was, Essa told Reuters from a boutique that stocks 28 style of his shoes.

Grandmother’s influence

His first shop opens in the next two weeks. The shoes are on sale in Beverly Hills, Paris and Ajaccio, Corsica.

Taught to sew by his grandmother, Essa had to persuade his parents that fashion was not just something for girls.

“The rest of my family was against it because it wasn’t a man’s job, it was a woman’s job. So it was our little secret between my grandmother and me, doing it behind my family’s back,” he said.

It was a tough decision to leave Damascus, which, unlike his home town of Homs, had escaped the worst of the fighting, especially because Essa had set up a workshop and shop in the capital.

Decision to flee

“We saw that the war had started to reach Damascus. There were attacks almost every day and I saw my friends and many families starting to leave one after the other — of course, the lucky ones, those who could afford to go.” He has not seen his family since he fled.

Each pair of Daniel Essa shoes is etched with a word under the tongue: “Freedom,” “Kisses,” or “Peace.”

“Everybody talks about world peace, but I really hope that one day we will have peace in our world,” Essa said.
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NATO defense ministers on Thursday unveiled plans for expanded military reinforcements by having the ability to deploy 30 troop battalions, 30 squadrons of aircraft and 30 warships within 30 days to any conflict on the European mainland.

Details of the U.S.-drafted plan remain unclear, though ministers said they aim to have it logistically operational no later than 2020.

The ministers also announced plans to strengthen its new command structure by more than 1,200 personnel spread across a new Atlantic command center based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a mainland Europe conflict logistics headquarters in Ulm, Germany. 

Briefly putting aside what NATO’s chief said were “serious differences” within the 29-member alliance, ministers agreed to a plan to protect the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, move troops more quickly across Europe and have more combat-ready battalions, ships and planes.

Notably absent from Thursday’s ministerial debates: a recent White House decision to target Europe on trade, which may further raise tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The European Union, along with Canada and Mexico, have expressed irritation over new U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which the administration of President Donald Trump has levied on national security grounds.

“There are differences related to issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and climate change,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

“We have disagreements between NATO allies but we stand together in NATO when it comes to the core task of NATO … to protect each other.”

July summit agenda

Another challenge facing the alliance are efforts to expand membership in Eastern Europe, where Russia has long opposed NATO’s presence.

Increasing from 12 to 29 member nations through seven rounds of enlargement since 1949, NATO recently updated its website to include four countries that have declared their intent to join the alliance ahead of the July 11 summit. Those nations include Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, and Macedonia

In a May visit to the White House, Secretary Stoltenberg said expansion will help strengthen the alliance. 

“We live in a more unpredictable world, we need a strong NATO, and we need to invest more in our security,” he said in an interview with VOA.

Former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, said the United States is working to help applicant nations meet the requirements for membership.

“We are there to give them the standards, to help them get there, and that’s what the open door policy is,” she said.

Former NATO deputy secretary general Alexander Vershbow, however, said countering malign Russian influence in the Balkans will remain a vital part of securing membership, citing recent evidence of Russian meddling in Macedonia’s domestic politics.

“Russians are perhaps more persistent and little bit more unscrupulous in their methods, but they have been long trying to discourage Western Balkan countries from joining NATO,” he told VOA. “Macedonia, I think, is the prime target right now, because the possibility of breakthrough between Macedonia and Greece on the name issue opens the way to possible negotiations on membership even this year.”

Greece opposes Macedonia’s name, saying it amounts to a territorial claim on a synonymous northern Greek region. Western involvement in the name dispute could ease Macedonia’s entry into NATO, but only if the country can meet the alliance’s strict requirements.

Matthew Nimetz, UN moderator on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute, told VOA that recent talks on the issue were productive.

“These were very workmanlike talks,” he said of recent meetings in New York. “The issues are well defined. The issues have been narrowed. We still don’t have a final resolution of the issues, but both sides are determined to do enough to try to reach an agreement and are working very hard to do that.”

Another key requirement for membership: a pledge to spend at least 2 percent of a country’s gross domestic product on defense.

Only five member nations — the Greece, Britain, Estonia, Poland, and the United States — currently meet that requirement.

Upon arriving in office, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO member countries for not contributing their fair share to the alliance. In a 2017 speech to NATO members, he failed to reiterate the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 pledge of mutual defense, rattling NATO allies.

The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump will travel to Brussels to attend a NATO summit scheduled for July 11-12, followed by a July 13 visit to Britain.

This story originated in VOA’s Macedonian Service. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual televised call-in show with Russians on Thursday in a semi-choreographed event that highlighted the Russian president’s efforts to raise living standards at home while defending Russian interests abroad. 

Amid Putin’s 18-year rule, the so-called “Direct Line” has emerged as a key symbol of Russia’s top-down system of government, in which Putin often sits as the sole arbiter of problems befalling citizens of the world’s largest country.

State media claimed that Russians submitted over 2.5 million questions to the Russian leader on topics ranging from health care to gas prices, pension payments, mortgage rates and much, much more. 

Despite a grueling live answering session before cameras, the limits of that format were also on display: Putin fielded under a hundred questions in just under 4.5 hours. 

Good (economics) vibrations

As anticipated, domestic issues dominated the session. 

Indeed, Putiin claimed improving Russians’ lives was his priority after a landslide re-election last March that was marred by accusations of vote tampering but secured Putin’s rule through 2024. 

Addressing the economy early on, Putin argued that Russia’s finances were “on the right path” and re-emphasized campaign calls that — despite western sanctions — Russia was poised for “breakthroughs” in its development. 

“Overall, we are heading in the right direction,” said Putin. “We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is modest, small, but it is also not falling backward.”

The Russian leader again touched on a campaign pledge to halve Russia’s poverty rate in his next, and — in theory — final six-year term. 

Asked by the event’s moderator whether the current government — whose leadership has gone largely unchanged from his previous term  — was capable of reaching that goal, Putin assured the “government team was optimal.” 

Foreign policy classics 

The event also contained Putin’s well-worn barbs against the West — with the United States, in particular, a long favorite target.  

Putin said that U.S. allies in Europe — currently engaged in a tariff showdown with the Trump administration — were slowly warming to the message he’d been delivering for years: U.S. foreign and economic policy was aimed at extending American power at the expense of the rest of the world. 

“It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions,” said Putin. “But now we are seeing that this is happening.”

Putin also accused the U.S. of fueling a Cold War-style arms race by abandoning key nuclear arms treaties, while expressing hope that the threat of mutual annihilation would continue to play a deterrent role. 

“The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us,” said the Russian leader.

In a related exchange, Putin assured that a new generation of Russian super weapons — unveiled by Putin in a high-profile speech before Russia’s Federal Council last March — were largely now operational and ready to defend Russia, despite doubts from outside experts.

 Hot wars

Russia’s very real conflicts also figured prominently.  

In Ukraine, where Russia has been engaged in a simmering proxy war since 2014, Putin suggested the government in Kyiv would pay a heavy price if rumors of a planned summer offensive against Russian-backed rebels in the country’s east proved true.  

“If this happens, I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general,” said Putin. 

When asked about Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Syria, Putin argued Russia’s military had gained valuable experience from participating in the Syrian conflict but seemed to walk back earlier repeated calls for a large-scale withdrawal of Russian forces. 

“Our soldiers are there in order to secure Russia’s interests in this critically important part of the world, which is so near to us. And they will stay there, for as long as it is in Russia’s interest for them to do so.”

Same old same old

Given this was the 16th Direct Line over the course of Putin’s rule, the event had an air of predictability that even the Russian president seemed to acknowledge. On several occasions, Putin noted several topics had been raised in past call-in programs.  

When asked whether he had chosen a possible successor, the Russian leader again demurred, noting it was a “traditional question.”

Yet the event was not without at least some surprises. For the first time, a live studio audience was jettisoned in favor of video and phone appeals fielded by young pro-Kremlin “volunteers.” 

Key governors and ministers were also a new part of the show, remaining on a direct video feed to address problems in real time — and occasionally faced admonishment from the president — when policies clashed with realities on the ground.

Informed theater

Debate has long simmered over just how choreographed the Direct Line truly is.  Obvious propaganda-style cutaways to highlight the government’s achievements mix with genuine complaints to create an atmosphere of what some called “informed theater.” 

Adding to that blur were screens in the background that posed apparently unfiltered — and occasionally uncomfortable — questions to the Russian leader.

“Why is there money for tanks, bombs, planes and machine guns, but no money for the people?” went one text message that appeared briefly on screen.

If Putin saw the prompt, it went unacknowledged.  

Regardless, the Russian leader looked far more comfortable than he was during a recent interview with Austria’s national ORF channel in which Putin repeatedly grew testy over the journalist’s line of inquiry and repeated follow-up questions. 

Direct Line offered none of that, and Putin seemed to enjoy the comfortable questions from Russian state media hosts.   

“Vladimir Putin, you received a record level of support during the last elections. Do you feel lonely at the top of political Olympus? Lonely without any competitors or competition?”  

“No, I’m not lonely,” he replied, adding, “I have my team.”  

With that, the Russian leader stared at the screen. 
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A 500-year-old copy of a letter in which Christopher Columbus describes his voyage to the Americas has been returned to Spain after U.S. authorities tracked down the document, which had been stolen and replaced with a forgery years ago.

The letter, copied centuries ago from the one Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain after his first Atlantic crossing, was given to Spain’s Ambassador Pedro Morenes in Washington, law enforcement authorities said on Thursday.

The repatriation of the letter follows seven years of sleuthing by U.S. law enforcement agencies after the discovery that it had been replaced by a forgery at the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona.

“We are truly honored to return this historically important document back to Spain — its rightful owner,” U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss said in a statement.

Columbus, born in Genoa in modern-day Italy, had written the letter in Spanish after his return to Europe in 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella, who sponsored his voyage, sent the document to Rome to be translated into Latin and manually copied, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie McCall said.

“A number of these copies were made and then delivered to various kings and queens in Europe to spread the news of Columbus’s discoveries,” McCall said by telephone.

A Latin copy of the letter, in which Columbus describes the mountains, fertile fields, gold and indigenous people he encountered in the Caribbean, is the one that was illegally swapped for a forgery at the Barcelona library, McCall said.

Authorities said they discovered the theft after a tip in 2011 to an assistant U.S. attorney in Delaware who had become experienced in the subject.

Because the library had digitized its collection before the theft, U.S. investigators said they and Spanish authorities were able to determine in 2012 that the letter it had was a forgery.

The real letter, they said, had been sold in November 2005 by two Italian book dealers for 600,000 euros.

After learning in March 2013 that it had been sold again in 2011 for 900,000 euros, authorities said they made contact with the person who had the letter. They said that person was unaware that it had been stolen.

They said they later concluded “beyond all doubt” that it was the letter taken from the Barcelona library and got it back.

The case is still under investigation, McCall said.
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