A new exhibition aims to show how the art world has responded to the global changes since the terror attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 at London’s Imperial War Museum brings together 40 artists from across the world whose works reflect on conflict and society since that day. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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The U.S. economy posted another impressive month, adding 228,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate, now at a 17-year low, remains unchanged at 4.1 percent. But even as more Americans returned to the workforce, job recruiters say the job market is changing and both employers and employees need to be prepared. Mil Arcega reports.
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The environmental group EcoWatch estimates that at least 1 million sea birds, and 100,000 marine mammals are killed every year by ingesting plastic or getting caught in it. It is an environmental nightmare, and it’s getting worse every year. But this week, more than 200 countries signed an agreement to begin dealing with the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The wildfire that roared through the orchards of California’s Ventura County destroyed much of the region’s avocado crop not just with flames, but also with fierce Santa Ana winds and a thick blanket of ash.
With the so-called Thomas Fire just 10 percent contained by Friday afternoon, after blackening more than 132,000 acres across Ventura County and destroying some 400 homes and other structures, it is too soon to know the extent of the damage to the upcoming avocado harvest.
But experts say even the mostly family-owned orchards spared by the epic conflagration may have suffered devastating losses to their crops from the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that blow out of the California desert, knocking avocados from the trees with gusts up to 80 miles per hour. (129 kilometers per hour)
The fruit cannot be sold for human consumption once it is on the ground because of food safety regulations.
“A lot of that fruit everybody was looking forward to harvesting next year is laying on the ground,” said John Krist, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.
Vulnerable to the wind
Avocados are the rare produce trees planted in hillside groves because of their shallow roots, said Ben Faber, a University of California farm adviser in Ventura. The fruit, typically harvested in February or March, is full-sized and heavy by December, held by a long stem.
Those factors make avocados, already growing away from their natural environment in Central and South America, more vulnerable to the whipping winds than the lemon orchards dotting the flatlands of Ventura, Faber said.
Lemons are also a lighter fruit with a shorter, sturdier stem. Ventura County is California’s largest growing region for both lemons and avocados. The state produces about 90 percent of the nation’s avocado crop and 80 percent of its lemons.
Delayed impact
Some avocado trees that do not appear to have been scorched could also reveal damage later, collapsing from internal heat damage. Fruit that did not burn or get blown off the branches may be sunburned by the loss of canopy.
Both lemon and avocado crops are also likely to suffer further from the thick coating of ash left by the Thomas Fire, which interferes with the natural enemy insects that hunt the pests feeding on the fruit trees. Those enemy insects are known to growers as “bio-controls.”
“When you get all this ash, they can’t do their jobs,” Faber said of the enemy insects. “That’s going to cause a disruption to the bio controls that’s going to go on for a year or more. So the impact of the fires is not all immediate.”
Unlike grapes at wineries in California’s Napa Valley wine-growing region hit by wildfires in October, however, avocados and lemons will not be affected by smoke from the fires because of their thick skins.
Experts said at the time that the delicate grapes, if exposed to sustained heavy smoke, could be vulnerable to “smoke taint,” which can alter their taste and aroma.
Prices not likely to rise
Consumers are not expected to see an impact on avocado prices because Ventura County is only a small piece of the worldwide production chain dominated by Mexico and South America, the farm bureau’s Krist said.
Avocado prices have been higher in most U.S. markets during the second half of 2017, according to the Hass Avocado Board, in part because of a poor harvest last year in the United States and Mexico.
The wildfire news didn’t have a major effect on the stock price of the Limoneira Company, the nation’s largest avocado grower, as shares closed essentially unchanged on Friday.
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There was relief in London and Brussels Friday after Britain clinched an initial agreement on its terms of divorce from the European Union, opening the way for the next — and even harder — phase of negotiations over the country’s future trade relations with the economic bloc.
“Let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, warned after the overnight deal was struck. “We all know that breaking up is hard. But breaking up and building a new relation is much harder.”
‘Give and take on both sides’
Welcoming Friday’s deal, which guarantees the rights of Europeans living in Britain and Britons residing in EU countries, as well as committing not to reestablish a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a bleary-eyed British Prime Minister Theresa May said there had been “give and take on both sides.”
Her aides say the deal was a triumph for her.
But many of the red lines she had laid down previously were crossed to pull off the breakthrough, analysts say.
To clinch the deal, May had to agree that the European Court of Justice will oversee the rights of EU citizens in Britain, for at least a minimum of eight years after Britain formally breaks from the EU, which is scheduled next year. She also agreed on an expensive exit bill, which will amount to $47-$53 billion.
’Regulatory alignment’
And to the anger of Brexiters, May also agreed that Britain will maintain “regulatory alignment” with the EU to ensure there doesn’t have to be a “hard border” or regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That suggests to them that Britain is likely heading for a so-called “soft Brexit,” whereby it remains entangled with the EU.
The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, scathingly described the 15-page draft agreement — it still has to be endorsed by EU national leaders next week — as “pathetic.”
He added: “The British prime minister had to fly through the middle of the night to go meet three unelected people who condescendingly are now saying ‘Jolly well done, May. You’ve met every single one of our demands. Thank you very much, we can now move on.’”
May and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, had originally planned to agree on a first-phase deal on Monday, but it was thwarted in a chaotic breakdown between the British prime minister and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who May needs for her parliamentary majority.
The DUP objected to some of the border commitments May was making.
Terms a tough sell?
For May, the challenge now may be to sell the terms of the divorce agreement to her own Conservative party.
Brexiters within her cabinet, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment minister Michael Gove, who both challenged her for the party leadership last year, were supportive of May publicly Friday.
“How long she will retain their backing? I wouldn’t like to place a wager on that,” remarked a Conservative lawmaker.
The promise that Britain will maintain close regulatory alignment with many of the EU single market’s rules and regulations for the sake of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, even after leaving the economic bloc, quickly attracted criticism from other Brexiters Friday.
Former official has concerns
One former Conservative minister, Owen Paterson, tweeted his concern over the alignment pledge — as well as divorce bill — saying they “must be debated and resolved.” He warned ominously, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
Other Brexiters said the agreement to maintain regulatory alignment between Britain and the EU was inconsistent with May’s pledge that “Brexit means Brexit.”
They argue by entangling Britain with EU regulations, it will make it harder for Britain to strike out and to negotiate bilateral trade deals with other countries.
They are suspicious also that, despite May’s insistence, Britain will leave the bloc’s customs union — which she is on course to keep Britain in — pushed to do so by ministers who want to retain a close relationship with the EU and opposition lawmakers in the House of Commons opposed to Brexit.
No ‘hard Brexit’
Their fears might not be misplaced. A former head of the British Foreign Office, Simon Fraser, says Friday’s deal makes it less likely there will be a sharp “hard Brexit” from the EU. But he says trade discussions will prove even harder than the first phase with “much bigger and more complicated negotiations.”
“We need a much clearer understanding of what our negotiating strategy is,” he told Britain’s Sky News.
For all sides in the Brexit divide roiling British politics there remains much to fight over, including the biggest of all questions: What should Britain’s future relationship with the EU look like? The first-phase deal is full of ambiguity and fudge and leaves more questions unresolved than it answers, analysts say.
According to former Conservative lawmaker and newspaper columnist Matthew Parris, “Theresa May’s supposed victory merely prolongs the illusions and postpones the hard decisions.”
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NAFTA trade negotiators convene in Washington next week for a limited round of talks unlikely to move the needle on major sticking points, but aimed at demonstrating some progress toward closing easier chapters.
Last month’s round of negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico City failed to resolve major differences, as Canada and Mexico pushed back on what they saw as unreasonable U.S. demands on automotive content rules, dispute settlement and a five-year sunset clause.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the United States wanted to see “meaningful progress” before year’s end.
The “intersessional” meetings in a Washington hotel come with lower expectations and without trade ministers from the three countries, who are due to attend a World Trade Organization meeting in Buenos Aires.
Some lobbyists and trade experts said that chapters with the best chances of showing progress were among those that Canada and Mexico had agreed to create or update in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: digital trade, food safety, state-owned enterprises and telecommunications.
NAFTA negotiators have not closed any chapters since completing talks on competition policy and small-medium enterprises in late September. Talks have since been dominated by U.S. demands, such as for half of all North American automotive content to be produced in the United States.
Less rhetoric, more substance
“The intersessional could be a chance to turn the temperature down,” said Max Baucus, a former U.S. senator who chairs Farmers for Free Trade, a coalition of U.S. farm sector groups. “This should be a round for the worker bees, with less rhetoric and more concrete negotiations.”
A senior Canadian government source said no progress would be made on the most contentious issues at the Washington talks.
Separately, Canada’s chief negotiator, Steve Verheul, said the U.S. “extreme proposals” were proving very hard to deal with.
“We will not accept U.S. proposals that would fundamentally weaken the benefits of NAFTA for Canada and undermine the competitiveness of the North American market in relation to the rest of the world,” Verheul told Canadian lawmakers this week.
The Washington meetings follow stepped-up lobbying efforts by NAFTA backers in the United States to warn against the dangers of withdrawing from the nearly 24-year-old trade pact.
Top Detroit auto executives met with Vice President Mike Pence, and pro-trade Republican senators met with President Donald Trump.
Moises Kalach, the head of Mexico’s CCE business lobby and a government consultant, said that the United States would need to back off from some of its “extreme” positions for compromises to be made.
“We’re ready to dance. The question is whether the American government is willing to do so,” Kalach told Reuters.
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Bangladesh’s central bank has asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to join a lawsuit it plans to file against a Philippines bank for its role in one of the world’s biggest cyber-heists, several sources said.
The Fed has yet to respond formally, but there is no indication it would join the suit.
Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed in February last year, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines.
Nearly two years later, there is no word on who was responsible, and Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million, mostly from a Manila junket operator.
Legal action discussed
Officials from Bangladesh Bank and the New York Fed spoke about legal action against RCBC in a conference call last month that was also attended by two representatives from SWIFT, according to three sources in Dhaka who had direct knowledge of the conversations.
It was agreed that Bangladesh Bank would send a proposal on the suit to the New York Fed, they said.
“The aim is to file a case by March-April in New York,” said one of the sources. “Work is on. Bangladesh Bank is likely to send something to the Fed soon.”
The source said the idea was it would be a civil suit to recover the money, and that Bangladesh hoped the Fed and SWIFT would be joint petitioners.
Subhankar Saha, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank, said he had no knowledge of any plans to sue RCBC but that “efforts are on to recover the entire stolen money.”
The New York Fed and SWIFT declined comment.
A source familiar with the New York Fed’s thinking confirmed that Bangladesh Bank’s external counsel raised the idea of filing a suit against RCBC in the call.
The New York Fed officials agreed to review any proposal Bangladesh Bank wrote up, but they did not formally agree to a joint effort, and have not since worked on it nor heard from Bangladesh Bank, the source said.
Rogue employees
RCBC has blamed rogue employees, and Philippine prosecutors have filed money-laundering charges against a former RCBC bank manager and four people who owned the bank accounts where the funds were sent, but are not identifiable because the accounts were in fake names. They are the only people to be formally cited in association with the crime.
Bangladeshi officials have cited internal RCBC documents, also seen by Reuters, to assert that the Filipino bank ignored suspicions raised by some RCBC officials when the money was first remitted to the accounts on Feb. 5, 2016, and then delayed acting on requests from RCBC’s head office to freeze the funds on Feb. 9.
RCBC did not respond to requests for comment. But it has said in the past that it would not pay any compensation and that Bangladesh Bank bore responsibility for the theft since it was negligent.
RCBC was fined a record 1 billion Philippine pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank last year for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.
Separately, a Bangladesh court has sent letters rogatory to the United States seeking the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the case, said the main police investigator in Dhaka. Letters rogatory are documents used to obtain judicial assistance from foreign courts.
“We have questions for the Federal Reserve Bank, we want to collect the FBI report, what their findings are,” Molla Nazrul Islam, a special superintendent of police in Bangladesh, told Reuters this week.
An FBI spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on ongoing cases.
A hacking group called Lazarus that is believed to have connections to North Korea has been linked to the Bangladesh cyberheist, and some U.S. officials said earlier this year that prosecutors were building a case against Pyongyang. But no case has yet been filed.
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The European Commission said Friday enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations with Britain and that a second phase of negotiations should begin, ending an impasse over the status of the Irish border.
The Commission announced its verdict in an early morning statement after intense talks, which resulted in British Prime Minister Theresa May taking an early morning flight to Brussels to announce the deal alongside Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Commission’s recommendation that sufficient progress has been made will now go to the European Union summit of leaders taking place next week. May said she expected a formal agreement to be approved at the summit.
“Prime Minister May has assured me that it has the backing of the UK government. On that basis, I believe we have now made the breakthrough we need. Today’s result is of course a compromise,” Juncker told a hastily arranged news conference.
The commission said it was ready to begin work immediately on Phase Two talks, which cover trade and long-term relations with the bloc.
Moving to talks about trade and a Brexit transition is crucial for the future of May’s premiership, and to keep trade flowing between the world’s biggest trading bloc and its sixth-largest national economy after Britain leaves on March 30, 2019.
Border with Ireland
May says an agreement between Britain and the European Union ensures there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit.
She says Northern Ireland has “a set of unique circumstances” because it has the U.K.’s only land border with an EU country.
The border issue has been threatening to derail the divorce talks.
Earlier this week, a Northern Ireland party that propped up May’s government scuttled a deal between the U.K and the bloc, prompting frantic diplomacy.
Business interests
London Mayor Sadiq Khan says he is disappointed by parts of the deal, but that May did what was necessary to get to the next stage of Brexit talks.
Khan says the government must accelerate progress to avoid further delays. He says it is critical that business leaders gain clarity on any interim plans to prevent companies from putting contingency plans in place to leave.
Germany’s main business lobby group agrees that the negotiations must pick up speed.
Joachim Lang, a top official with the Federation of German Industries, or BDI, said Friday that German businesses were “relieved about the breakthrough.”
He warned that “the most difficult part of the negotiations lies ahead of us” and businesses need clarity “as quickly as possible” about future relations between the European Union and Britain.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The White House on Thursday denied that the president’s announcement on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem meant his administration was pulling out of the Middle East peace process.
“In fact, in the president’s remarks, he said that we are as committed to the peace process as ever, and we want to continue to push forward in those conversations and those discussions,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “And hopefully the ultimate goal, I think, of all those parties is to reach a peace deal. And that’s something that the United States is very much committed to.”
WATCH: Protests Against US Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital Continue
No other country has immediately followed President Donald Trump’s lead in planning to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the White House is acknowledging.
“I’m not aware of any countries that we anticipate that happening at any point soon,” Sanders said. “I’m not saying that they aren’t, but I’m not aware of them.”
A day after the president’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the Russian ambassador in Israel, Alexander Shein, said Moscow could move its embassy to West Jerusalem “after the Palestinians and the Israelis agree on all issues of the final status of the Palestinian territories.”
Russian statement
The Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement viewed as a surprise by Israelis, said it considered “East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
In response to Trump’s announcement, Palestinian factions announced that Friday would be a “Day of Rage,” while the Islamist group Hamas called for an uprising against Israel.
The Israeli military said one of its aircraft and a tank had targeted two militant posts in the Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel.
The Al-Tawheed Brigades — which has ignored the call of Hamas, the dominant force in Gaza, to desist from firing rockets — claimed responsibility for the launches.
Stone-throwing Palestinian protesters have clashed with Israeli troops, who responded by firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets, on Gaza and the West Bank in response to Trump’s announcement.
Trump said Wednesday that he was directing the State Department to begin drawing up architectural plans for a U.S. embassy in the holy city. But the actual relocation of the embassy would take years, according to White House officials.
Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed concern about the timing of Trump’s announcement, according to U.S. officials.
Asked by VOA whether the president’s declaration had been delayed at the request of the two Cabinet members in order to put in place adequate security at U.S. embassies, Sanders said the decision was made only after “a thoughtful and responsible process” and that “components of the decision went through the full interagency process.”
Palestinian officials said Trump’s decision had disqualified the U.S. as an honest broker in the peace process.
Many U.S. allies also disagreed with the move. The U.N. Security Council and the Arab League plan to meet soon to discuss the action.
’Recognizing the reality’
Tillerson defended the decision on a visit to Vienna.
“All of Israel’s government offices are largely in Jerusalem already, so the U.S. is just recognizing the reality of that,” the secretary of state said. He noted, however, that Trump “also said the U.S. would support a two-state solution if that is the desire of the two parties, and he also said this does not in any way finalize the status of Jerusalem.”
The Russian foreign minister, with whom Tillerson met Thursday in Vienna, warned that if Washington prematurely moved its embassy to Jerusalem, it could endanger the two-state solution.
“We have asked them to explain the meaning of the decisions on eventually moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “We have asked to explain what consequences of this move the Americans see for the efforts taken under the U.N. aegis and by the Quartet of international mediators.”
The Quartet, established in 2002, consists of entities involved in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The members are the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.
Robert Berger in Jerusalem and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is challenging suggestions of illegal conduct in an undercover sting operation targeting allegedly corrupt government officials in Kyiv, which the FBI conducted in concert with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
The United States and European Union have provided logistical support and training for NABU investigators tasked with ferreting out government graft in the Eastern European country. The support is part of the financial and diplomatic backing of the leadership that took power in Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan protests, which ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.
But Ukraine’s top prosecutor says NABU investigators overstepped the law in a recent probe of suspected corruption in Ukraine’s migration service.
‘Absolutely illegal’
General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told parliament he wanted to address issues around “the relationship between various law enforcement agencies that causes public outrage and rather harsh statements by our strategic international partners — the U.S. and the EU.”
“A joint [FBI-NABU] operation … is an absolutely illegal action without the relevant legal procedures,” Lutsenko said in a recent television interview, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
In an interview with VOA, NABU Director Artem Sytnyk defended actions of his undercover agents, as well as the agency’s cooperation with FBI.
“This is about the survival of the corrupt elite,” he said. “It further proves that it is impossible to investigate corruption at the highest level and not run into resistance.”
In a statement to VOA, FBI spokeswoman Samantha T. Shero said the law enforcement agency entered into a June 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NABU to provide investigative assistance, training and capacity building for NABU and Ukraine’s Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
“The FBI abides by host nation laws and never operates outside the MOU,” she said, explaining that FBI personnel are temporarily assigned on a rotational basis at the NABU in support of this relationship.
“These special agents and analysts are not operational, and any statements to the contrary are not true,” she said. “Rooting out corruption is a priority for the FBI and we routinely work with our foreign law enforcement partners across the globe to investigate corruption and provide assistance when requested. We value our relationship with the NABU and SAPO, and have found their staff to be professional and trustworthy. NABU and SAPO are young organizations that face enormous challenges in the work that they are doing in Ukraine.”
The FBI, Shero added, will continue to provide NABU and SAPO with support and assistance in their “important work for the Ukrainian people.”
Committee chair dismissed
On Thursday, an opposition legislator who chairs the Ukrainian parliamentary anti-corruption committee was dismissed by fellow lawmakers, in what critics of President Petro Poroshenko’s ruling party are calling an open assault on NABU, the country’s only independent corruption watchdog.
The office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s and Poroshenko’s government have come under increasing pressure in recent weeks amid perceived backsliding on reform commitments, which has delayed billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund and tested the patience of Western countries, even as Kyiv pushes for closer EU integration and possible membership.
Ukraine’s general prosecutor on Wednesday denied that his office was impeding the NABU’s work as he sought to deflect charges by Kyiv’s Western backers that Ukraine was coming up short on promises to fight graft.
This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. Some information came from Reuters.
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Ford Motor Co will begin testing its latest self-driving vehicle technology next year in at least one city but has not changed its plan to begin commercial production until 2021, the company said.
The automaker said on Thursday that it would test self-driving prototypes in various pilot programs with partners such as Lyft, the ride services company in which rival General Motors owns a minority stake, and Domino’s Pizza. However, Ford has still not decided whether to operate its own on-demand transportation service.
New business models
In a blog post, Jim Farley, president of global markets, said Ford also would test new business models that involve its self-driving vehicles, including the movement of people and goods.
GM unveiled plans last week to introduce its own on-demand ride-sharing service in several U.S. cities in 2019, using self-driving versions of the battery-powered Chevrolet Bolt.
Ford is shifting production of a future battery electric vehicle to Mexico to free up capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build the self-driving vehicles in 2021, according to spokesman Alan Hall.
The electric vehicle, whose more-advanced battery system will enable a driving range of more than 300 miles, will go into production in 2020 at Ford’s Cuatitlan plant, which suppliers say will also build a new hybrid crossover vehicle around the same time.
Adding 850 jobs
At the Flat Rock plant, Ford is boosting investment to $900 million from $700 million and adding 850 jobs.
Both the 2020 electric and the 2021 self-driving vehicles will draw on the next-generation Ford Focus for some of their underbody structure and components while using different propulsion systems.
Unlike the full electric vehicle from Cuatitlan, the self-driving vehicle from Flat Rock will use a hybrid system with a gasoline engine and an electric motor, Hall said.
Albania is planning to try to lure five-star hotel brands with tax breaks, including scrapping profit and property taxes, to increase its appeal for the higher-end of the tourist trade.
With travel and tourism accounting for 8.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2016, rising demand to visit the country between Montenegro and Greece washed by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas is not being met by present facilities and infrastructure.
One of Europe’s poorest but also most unspoiled countries, Albania has been wooing tourists by encouraging them to “Go Your Own Way,” counting on the appeal of adventure tourism.
Now, to lure international hotel brands, the government is to pass a law this month to exempt them from profit tax for 10 years, scrap infrastructure tax and property taxes, and have them pay a VAT tax of 6 percent for any service on their hotels or resorts.
International hotel chains or anyone possessing a franchise from them is welcome provided they invest no less than eight million euros for a four-star hotel and no less than 15 million euros for a five-star hotel, said Elton Orozi, an official at the tourism ministry.
“Albania is trying to offer more to tourists who spend more time and money so as to get acquainted with the culture, history and nature,” added Orozi.
The incentives will apply to developers only if they do not sell on the units since the government wants to avoid villas being built on the seashore by wealthy Albanians using them as second homes.
Building luxury hotels will also depend on whether the investors steer clear of land ownership troubles, which doomed an effort to lure the French Club Med holiday company to Albania more than a decade ago.
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The trial of Kurdish opposition party leader Selahattin Demirtas has started in Ankara. Demirtas is charged with terrorism and has been held for more than a year in pretrial detention. The case is drawing growing international criticism.
Supporters of the jailed Kurdish leader gathered outside Ankara’s Sincan prison, where the Kurdish leader’s trial began Thursday.
In a 500 page indictment, Demirtas is accused of leading a terrorist organization, spreading terrorist propaganda, and inciting hate and crime.
Controversy surrounds the case over the decision to hold the trial in a prison and to allocate a court room that allows only 20 people to watch.
Hasip Kaplan a former parliamentary deputy of Demirtas’s HDP party, speaking outside the prison, voiced anger over the handling of the hearing.
“I have one thing to say to those who had unlawfully lifted the immunity of our political leader and who now cannot even bring him to a court near the parliament, but instead try him, within barbed fences after 399 day’s of detention,” Kaplan said.
Tried in absentia
The Kurdish leader is being tried in absentia after the court denied his right to attend, insisting he use a video link from the prison in which he is being held — an option he refused.
The trial has become a focal point of criticism over the government’s crackdown after last year’s failed coup and the introduction of emergency rule. Demirtas is widely seen as one of the most charismatic and effective political opponents to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In the past year, more than 11,000 HDP officials have been detained, including dozens of elected mayors and nine parliamentary deputies. Party co-leader Figen Yuksekdag appeared in court Wednesday on similar terrorism charges.
Rights groups criticize move
Human rights groups nationally and internationally claim there is little evidence to justify the case against Demirtas.
Senior researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S. based Human Rights Watch says the case is alarming .
“In general, we do not see any evidence of criminal activity. It is all about his speeches, and for this he faces multi charges,” she said. “The sentence altogether when you stack up all the charges comes to around 142 years.”
Ankara also has faced heavy criticism over the Kurdish leader being held for more than a year in pre-trial detention.
But the Turkish government strongly defends the prosecution and judiciary, claiming the HDP, Turkey’s second largest opposition party, is a terrorist organization linked to Kurdish insurgent group the PKK.
Demirtas denies all charges against him. The trial has adjourned until February and the judges ruled Demirtas will remain in prison.
The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin will visit Egypt next week to discuss expanding political, economic, energy and trade ties.
During Monday’s trip the Russian leader will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on issues related to stability and security in the Middle East and North Africa.
Putin’s visit follows the Russian government’s announcement last week that Moscow and Cairo have drafted an agreement for Russian warplanes to use Egyptian military bases.
The deal comes as part of Moscow’s efforts to further expand its military foothold in the region following its military campaign in Syria.
Under Sissi, Egypt has expanded military ties with Russia and signed a slew of deals to buy Russian weapons.
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A bitcoin mining company in Slovenia has been hacked for the possible theft of tens of millions of dollars, just days before the virtual currency, which hit a record above $15,000 on Thursday, is due to start trading on major U.S. exchanges.
NiceHash, a company that mines bitcoins on behalf of customers, said it is investigating a security breach and will stop operating for 24 hours while it verifies how many bitcoins were taken.
Research company Coindesk said that a wallet address referred to by NiceHash users indicates that about 4,700 bitcoins had been stolen. At Thursday’s record price of about $15,000, that puts the value at over $70 million.
There was no immediate response from NiceHash to an emailed request for more details.
“The incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are cooperating with them as a matter of urgency,” it said. The statement urged users to change their online passwords.
Slovenian police are investigating the case together with authorities in other states, spokesman Bostjan Lindav said, without providing details.
The hack will put a spotlight on the security of bitcoin just as the trading community prepares for the currency to start trading on two established U.S. exchanges. Futures for bitcoin will start trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange on Sunday evening and on crosstown rival CME Group’s platforms later in the month.
That has increased the sense among some investors that bitcoin is gaining in mainstream legitimacy after several countries, like China, tried to stifle the virtual currency.
As a result, the price of bitcoin has jumped in the past year, particularly so in recent weeks. On Thursday it surged to over $15,000, up $1,300 in less than a day, according to Coindesk. At the start of the year, one bitcoin was worth less than $1,000.
Bitcoin is the world’s most popular virtual currency. Such currencies are not tied to a bank or government and allow users to spend money anonymously. They are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they are traded.
A debate is raging on the merits of such currencies. Some say they serve merely to facilitate money laundering and illicit, anonymous payments. Others say they can be helpful methods of payment, such as in crisis situations where national currencies have collapsed.
Miners of bitcoins and other virtual currencies help keep the systems honest by having their computers keep a global running tally of transactions. That prevents cheaters from spending the same digital coin twice.
Online security is a vital concern for such dealings.
In Japan, following the failure of a bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox, new laws were enacted to regulate bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Mt. Gox shut down in February 2014, saying it lost about 850,000 bitcoins, possibly to hackers.
Ali Zerdin in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Carlo Piovano in London contributed to this story.
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At the summit of one of Iceland’s most dangerous volcanoes, a 72-foot (22-meter) depression in the snow is the only visible sign of an alarming development.
The Oraefajokull volcano, dormant since its last eruption in 1727-1728, has seen a recent increase in seismic activity and geothermal water leakage that has worried scientists. With the snow hole on Iceland’s highest peak deepening 18 inches (45 centimeters) each day, authorities have raised the volcano’s alert safety code to yellow.
Experts at Iceland’s Meteorological Office have detected 160 earthquakes in the region in the past week alone as they step up their monitoring of the volcano. The earthquakes are mostly small but their sheer number is exceptionally high.
“Oraefajokull is one of the most dangerous volcanos in Iceland. It’s a volcano for which we need to be very careful,” said Sara Barsotti, Coordinator for Volcanic Hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
What worries scientists the most is the devastating potential impact of an eruption at Oraefajokull.
Located in southeast Iceland about 320 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital, Reykjavik, the volcano lies under the Vatnajokull glacier, the largest glacier in Europe. Its 1362 eruption was the most explosive since the island was populated, even more explosive that the eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that destroyed the city of Pompei.
Adding to the danger is the lack of historical data that could help scientists predict the volcano’s behavior.
“It’s not one of the best-known volcanos,” Barsotti said. “One of the most dangerous things is to have volcanos for which we know that there is potential for big eruptions but with not that much historical data.”
Iceland is home to 32 active volcanic sites, and its history is punctuated with eruptions, some of them catastrophic. The 1783 eruption of Laki spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands of people and sparking famine when crops failed. Some historians cite it as a contributing factor to the French Revolution.
The Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in April 2010, prompting aviation authorities to close much of Europe’s airspace for five days out of fear that its volcanic ash could damage jet engines. Millions of travelers were stranded by the move.
To remedy the lack of data for Oraefajokull, scientists are rushing to install new equipment on and around the volcano. Those include ultra-sensitive GPS sensors that can detect even the slightest tremors, webcams for real-time imagery of the volcano and sensors in the rivers that drain the volcano’s glaciers to measure the chemical composition of the water.
Associated Press journalists last week visited scientists working near the mouth of the Kvia River, where the stench of sulfur was strong and the water was murky, clear signs that geothermal water was draining from the caldera.
“The most plausible explanation is that new magma is on the move deep below the surface,” said Magnus Gudmundsson, professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Reykjavik.
But what happens next is anyone’s guess. In the most benign scenario, the phenomenon could simply cease. More concerning would be the development of a subglacial lake that could lead to massive flooding. At the far end of the spectrum of consequences would be a full eruption.
With such high-risk developments at stake, authorities are taking precautions. Police inspector Adolf Arnason now is patrolling the road around the volcano, which will be used for any evacuation, and residents have received evacuation briefings.
“Some farmers have only 20 minutes (to leave),” he said, pulling up to a small farm on the flank of the mountain.
If an evacuation is ordered, everyone in the area will receive a text message and the radio will broadcast updates. Police are confident that Oraefi’s 200 residents will know how to react, but their biggest concern is contacting tourists.
Iceland has seen a huge boom in tourism since the 2010 eruption — a record 2.4 million people are expected to visit this year and about 2,000 tourists travel through Oraefi every day. While some stay in hotels that could alert their guests, others spend the night in camper vans spread across the remote area.
“The locals know what to do. They know every plan and how to react. But the tourists, they don’t,” said Police Chief superintendent Sveinn Runarsson. “That’s our worst nightmare.”
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The United Arab Emirates says it is “surprised and disappointed” about being blacklisted by the European Union along with 16 other countries the EU deems guilty of unfairly offering tax avoidance schemes.
The UAE said in a statement on Thursday that it’s “committed to a reform process which will be finalized by October 2018” and that it’s “absolutely confident this will ensure the UAE is swiftly removed from the list.”
The EU announced the list on Wednesday, though penalties still need to be confirmed.
The UAE is a federation of seven sheikhdoms that includes Dubai and the oil-rich capital of Abu Dhabi. Dubai’s massive real estate market has attracted both scrupulous and unscrupulous investors.
The UAE is largely tax-free, though value-added taxes will begin in the country on Jan. 1.
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An oil-and-gas lease sale that raised concerns with environmentalists due to the vast amount of acres offered in Arctic Alaska drew few bids on Wednesday, government officials said.
Seven bids were received, covering about 80,000 acres – or less than 1 percent of the 10.3 million acres offered in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska by the Trump administration. It was, by far, more territory than ever offered in any of the previous 12 NPR-A lease sales held since 1999.
The sale was the latest move by the administration of President Donald Trump, a Republican, supporting his pledge to make the United States “energy dominant” by boosting output of oil, natural gas and coal.
Environmentalists have generally accepted some oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve but worry the Trump administration will lift too many restrictions.
Environmentalists want to entirely block opening the state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc, in partnership with Anadarko Petroleum Corp, submitted the seven bids, totaling $1.16 million, for tracts in the NPR-A. Results were revealed in a bid opening conducted in Anchorage by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The ConocoPhillips-Anadarko bids were for tracts along the southern border of ConocoPhillips’ Greater Mooses Tooth unit, where oil production is expected to start next year.
“Lease sale interest is unpredictable,” Ted Murphy, associate director of the BLM’s Alaska office, said in a telephone news conference after the sale. “We don’t know what industry, ultimately, will be interested in getting from year to year.”
Last year’s NPR-A lease sale drew $18.8 million in bids, led by ConocoPhillips, for 67 tracts covering 613,529 acres.
One environmentalist said the results on Wednesday suggest that the Trump administration is overestimating industry’s desire to drill new Arctic territory.
“It seems, from my perspective, that it’s this mentality that if we open it, industry will come. And that’s not necessarily true,” said Lisa Baraff of the Fairbanks-based Northern Alaska Environmental Center.
Kara Moriarty, executive director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said the low level of NPR-A bidding might show that companies were being strategic about new leases.
She noted that another lease sale for state land “right next door” to NPR-A drew brisk bidding. The Alaska Oil and Gas Division’s lease sale, also held Wednesday, drew $19.9 million and over 100 bids, mostly from Spanish energy company Repsol SA and Colorado-based independent oil company Armstrong.
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Sinopec USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese oil and gas conglomerate, has sued Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA in a U.S. court, claiming it never received full payment for an order of steel rebar.
The lawsuit asks for $23.7 million for breach of contract and conspiracy to defraud. The legal action signals a split with another of Venezuela’s biggest backers as the cash-strapped country seeks to restructure some $60 billion in debt in a landscape of low oil prices and production.
The complaint suggests “patience is getting really thin at this point,” said Mark Weidemaier, law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on international debt disputes. “This is a further sign of frostiness in the Chinese-Venezuelan relations.”
PDVSA declined to comment.
China, which has loaned Venezuela more than $50 billion over the past decade, recently has been reluctant to involve itself more deeply in the South American country’s debt crisis. It has curtailed its credit to Venezuela in the last 22 months because of chronic payment delays, troubles with joint venture projects, and crime faced by Chinese firms operating in the country.
In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston on Nov. 27, Sinopec said PDVSA paid half of a 2012 purchase order for 45,000 tons of steel rebar, which is used in oil rigs, by its fully owned subsidiary Bariven.
It accused the Venezuelan oil company of using Bariven “as a sham to perpetrate fraud against Sinopec,” and called the PDVSA subsidiary an “undercapitalized shell with the sole purpose of preventing Sinopec from having a remedy.”
Any solution to Venezuela’s financial crisis will need the involvement of the Chinese and Russian governments, which are owed a substantial amount from the country. A Russian state-owned shipping company, Sovcomflot, also brought suit last year against PDVSA over $30 million in unpaid shipping fees.
PDVSA is in talks with a handful of European companies to obtain credit for oil and gas projects in a bid to reverse a slump in output to an almost 30-year low, and has been seeking financing from China and Russia.
But kidnappings and thefts in Caracas have prompted some Chinese executives working in the country to move to Colombia to escape the problems, sources have said. Chinese-run infrastructure projects also have faced delays.
Carmakers and small grocery stores that flourished under late president Hugo Chavez due to preferential currency exchange terms have either closed or downsized. Current president Nicolas Maduro no longer offers the same preferential terms for Chinese businesses to have access to cheap imports.
“The Chinese don’t have a whole lot to show for their loans,” a Western diplomat in Caracas said.
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Opinion polls show Vladimir Putin is already a shoo-in to win a fourth presidential term. But a ban on Russia taking part in the Winter Olympics is likely to make support for him even stronger, by uniting voters around his message: The world is against us.
Putin announced on Wednesday that he would run for re-election in March’s presidential vote, setting the stage for him to extend his dominance of Russia’s political landscape into a third decade.
With ties between the Kremlin and the West at their lowest point for years, the International Olympic Committee’s decision to bar Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games over doping is seen in Moscow as a humiliating and politically tinged act.
Putin, echoing his familiar refrain that his country is facing a treacherous Western campaign to hold it back, said he had “no doubt” that the IOC’s decision was “absolutely orchestrated and politically-motivated.”
“Russia will continue moving forwards, and nobody will ever be able to stop this forward movement,” Putin said.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the upper house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, had been among the first to cast the move as part of a Western plot against Russia, which sees sport as a barometer of geopolitical influence.
“They are targeting our national honor … our reputation … and our interests. They (the West) bought out the traitors … and orchestrated media hysteria,” Kosachyov wrote on social media.
The IOC ruling is also seen by many in Russia as a personal affront to Putin, who was re-elected president in 2012 after spending four years as prime minister because the constitution barred him from a third consecutive term as head of state.
The sport-loving leader cast his hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, at which the IOC says there was “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system, as a symbol of Russia’s success under his rule.
But Putin has often extracted political benefit from crises, and turned international setbacks into domestic triumphs, by accusing the West of gunning for Russia and using this to inspire Russians to unite.
“Outside pressure on Russia, understood as politically motivated and orchestrated from the U.S., leads to more national cohesion,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said on Wednesday.
“Various sanctions are being turned into instruments of nation-building.”
Putin’s popularity, supported by state television, is already high. Opinion polls regularly give him an approval rating of around 80 percent.
But casting the IOC ban as a Western plot to hurt Russia, something he did when Russian athletes were banned from last year’s Summer Olympics in Rio over doping, could help him mobilize the electorate.
Public anger over the IOC move could help Putin overcome signs of voter apathy and ensure a high turnout which, in the tightly controlled limits of the Russian political system, is seen as conferring legitimacy.
There were early signs that fury over the IOC’s decision was duly stirring patriotic fervor.
“Russia is a superpower,” Alexander Kudrashov, a member of the Russian Military Historical Society, told Reuters on Moscow’s Red Square after the IOC ruling.
Without Russia, he said, the Olympics would not be valid. He linked the decision to a Western anti-Russian campaign which many Russians believe took hold after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
“Choosing between the people in Crimea, who wept when the Russian flag was run up and who were doomed to genocide, and sportspeople taking first place on the podium, I choose the people who couldn’t defend themselves,” Kudrashov said.
‘We soak it up and survive’
Blaming the West is an approach the Kremlin has often used before when faced with international allegations of wrongdoing — over Crimea’s annexation, the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and charges of meddling in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists rebelled against rule from Kiev after Crimea was annexed.
The tactic taps into Russians’ patriotism and makes Putin almost bullet-proof when it comes to scandal. The 65-year-old former KGB agent is regarded by many voters as a tsar-like father-of-the-nation figure who has brought their country back from the brink of collapse.
When at the start of the year it seemed there was a window to repair relations with the West after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he wanted better ties, the narrative of Russia versus the world was muted.
But when it became clear that U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in Trump’s election precluded any rapprochement, Putin doubled down on the narrative. In October, he launched a stinging critique of U.S. policy, listing what he called the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations.
Sources close to the Russian government say the IOC ban, along with continued Western sanctions over Ukraine and the prospect of new sanctions, will help the authorities rally voters around the banner of national unity which Putin embodies.
“Outside pressure just makes us stronger,” said one such source who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, set the tone on social media in comments that found ready support from many Russians.
“What haven’t we been forced to suffer from our ‘partners’ in the course of our history,” she wrote. “But they just can’t bring us down. Not via a world war, the collapse of the Soviet Union or sanctions … We soak it up and survive.”
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Ukraine’s general prosecutor denied on Wednesday that his office was impeding the work of a new anti-corruption body as he sought to deflect charges by Kyiv’s Western backers that Ukraine was backsliding on promises to fight graft.
The United States, the European Union and Canada have thrown financial and diplomatic support behind the leadership that took power in Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan protests ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovich.
But perceived backsliding on reform commitments has delayed billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund and tested the patience of Western countries even as Kyiv pushes for closer EU integration and possible membership.
The United States and EU have homed in on concerns that vested interests are trying to undermine the independence of the anti-corruption bureau known as NABU, which was set up after the Maidan protests and has been at loggerheads with other law enforcement bodies.
One recent episode had the General Prosecutor’s office unmasking an alleged sting operation being carried out by NABU against suspected corruption in the migration service. It said NABU had overstepped the law.
General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told parliament he wanted to address issues around “the relationship between various law enforcement agencies that causes public outrage and rather harsh statements by our strategic international partners — the U.S. and the EU.”
He denied his office was at war with NABU, saying NABU officers must face the legal consequences if they commit offenses.
“Our normal cooperation does not mean that the General Prosecutor’s office can ignore signs that laws have been broken,” Lutsenko said.
Earlier Wednesday, NABU tweeted thanks to international backers for their support, posting statements released this week by the U.S. Department of State and the EU.
Questionable actions
The U.S. State Department said on Monday that recent events in Ukraine, including the disruption of a high-level corruption investigation and the arrest of NABU officials, raised concerns about its commitment to fighting corruption.
“These actions … undermine public trust and risk eroding international support for Ukraine,” a spokeswoman said.
The EU on Tuesday night urged that the work of anti-corruption institutions “must not be undermined but reinforced.”
Britain’s Ambassador to Kyiv, Judith Gough, on Wednesday cited a survey showing corruption within state bodies was the top issue for Ukrainian voters.
“Surely tackling corruption is a vote winner, rather than undermining institutions active in the fight against corruption?” she tweeted.
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If you buy a “Swiss-made” watch thinking it’s almost entirely produced in Switzerland, you might be mistaken.
The manufacture of components including dials, sapphire glass and cases is flourishing in China, Thailand and Mauritius and many of these end up in watches designated as “Swiss-made.”
Stricter rules came into force this year for watches bearing the coveted label on their dial and for which consumers are prepared to pay a premium.
The key requirement is that 60 percent of the manufacturing costs occur in Switzerland, up from a previous 50 percent threshold that applied only to the movement – the core mechanism.
The new rules were meant to make the label more credible in the eyes of consumers and to shield the industry from Asian competition.
But the change has made it difficult for the makers of cheaper Swiss watches to cut costs and weather a harsh industry downturn. And at the same time it has left the makers of more expensive brands enough leeway to shift a chunk of component supplies to Asia to protect their profit margins.
“Since the Swiss-made rules were tightened, we have fewer orders, not more,” said Alain Marietta of dialmaker Metalem, based in Swiss watchmaking hub Le Locle. “Some customers ask us to produce half of the components in China so we can be cheaper.”
He said he was concerned about losing customers but had stuck to his principles. “We want to offer a real Swiss made in Switzerland, otherwise for the people working in the watch industry here, it’ll mean slow death.”
Cost pressures
Affordable brands struggle to make money in Switzerland, where labor costs are high, margins are low and intense foreign competition, including from smartwatches, means they can’t raise prices.
Citychamp’s Rotary brand, which had used the label for decades, offers no “Swiss-made” pieces in its latest collections, saying the new rules made it hard to deliver value and quality.
Swatch Group, whose watches span all price points and which has extensive production facilities in Switzerland, said it was benefiting from the new rules it advocated. Chief Executive Nick Hayek said in a recent newspaper interview the group might soon be without competition in affordable “Swiss-made” watches.
Mondaine Group’s Ronnie Bernheim said the group’s brands, which include popular Swiss railways watch Mondaine, had also abandoned some models that would not have met the new criteria.
National Watch Federation (FH) statistics show the value of exported watches with a retail price of up to 600 Swiss francs ($610), fell by more than 11 percent in the first 10 months of 2017, versus an overall rise of 2.4 percent for all price tags.
Watches account for roughly 10 percent of overall Swiss exports and almost 57,000 people work in the industry.
Specialist companies have sprung up that offer brands the optimum product mix that will qualify for the “Swiss-made” tag.
EOS Watch Development, for example, promises on its website to deliver “Swiss-made” products that will help customers save money by combining Swiss and Far East suppliers.
Tough at the top
At the top end of the market where timepieces sell for thousands of francs, a severe downturn in demand translated into sharply lower profits in recent years.
Profitability at luxury group Richemont and more diversified Swatch Group is recovering now, helped by improving sales, but a tight focus on costs remains vital.
“Some brands in the high end would up to now never have considered buying components abroad for ethical reasons, but also because their excessive retail prices and resulting margin levels allowed it,” said a Swiss dialmaker who asked to remain anonymous.
“The slowing demand forced almost all brands to reposition their products and they benefit from the new law, which is very explicit, to improve their margins by partly sourcing abroad.”
He said his own dial company was mainly producing in Mauritius, where salaries are much lower, but a technical bureau performing some operations in Switzerland meant the dials qualified as “Swiss-made.”
Several sources said almost all watch case makers now imported sapphire glass from Asia. Luxury watchmakers generally keep their suppliers secret, but recently there have been some initiatives denouncing this lack of transparency.
Francois Aubry, a supplier turned watchmaker, recently launched a timepiece with “99.99 percent Swiss production,” publishing the list of all its suppliers, while the Swiss CODE41 watch project raised 543,000 francs on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter with a concept of total transparency on the mostly
Chinese origin of its components.
Industry body FH said it was its task to intervene if “Swiss-made” rules were not respected. It has decided to set up a task force to make sure everybody plays by the new rules, especially once a transition period expires at the end of 2018.
However, some watchmakers have already lost patience with the system.
High-end brand H.Moser & Cie this year dumped the “Swiss-made” label while declaring its own watches over 95 percent Swiss. It denounced the official rules as “too lenient, providing no guarantee, creating confusion and encouraging abuses.”
Chinese exports to Cuba have plunged this year in the latest sign of a worsening in the Communist-run island’s financial situation, which began in 2015 with the economic crisis in its top trading partner Venezuela.
Chinese exports to Cuba slumped 29.8 percent to $1 billion from January through October compared with the same period last year, according to Chinese customs.
Chinese exports peaked at a record $1.9 billion in 2015, nearly 60 percent above the annual average of the previous decade. They slipped slightly last year to $1.8 billion.
China sends a broad array of supplies to Cuba, from machinery and transportation equipment to raw materials, chemicals and food.
The Chinese commercial office in Havana said the decline was due to Cuba’s payment problems. China ranked as Cuba’s first trading partner in terms of goods in 2016, followed by Venezuela.
The economic crisis in Venezuela, lower revenue from commodity and related exports, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma and the Trump administration’s tightening of business and travel restrictions have left Cuba without cash to pay some suppliers and investment partners.
Western diplomats and businessmen estimate Cuban state-run banks, which must pay suppliers, have fallen behind by anywhere from $800 million to well over a billion dollars since 2015.
“China’s exports to Cuba are experiencing difficult times and the pressure continues for many businessmen due to the economic difficulties this Caribbean nation is going through,” Hong Xiao, economic and commercial counselor at the Chinese embassy, told Chinese business representatives attending a Havana trade fair last month, according to news agency Xinhua.
Cuba’s trade in goods last year was $12.6 billion, compared with $15 billion in 2015, more than 80 percent imports.
The cash crunch and lower oil supplies from Venezuela have forced the government to slash imports and reduce the use of fuel and electricity, helping tip its economy into recession in 2016 for the first time in nearly a quarter century.
The island’s economy relies on imports to fuel economic activity, so a drop in Chinese exports does not bode well.
“The fall in imports from China is a pattern more or less across the board and in part reflects the government’s efforts to balance revenues and pay debt,” said former Cuban central bank economist Pavel Vidal, now a professor at Universidad Javeriana Cali in Colombia.
“That means less consumer goods and supplies for the productive sector, which effects growth,” said Vidal, who expects little if any growth this year despite increased government spending and foreign investment.
The government had hoped for a 2 percent increase in the gross domestic product after last year’s contraction of 0.9 percent.
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Supporters of the far right in Finland and anti-facists staged rival marches in the capital Wednesday as the country celebrated 100 years of independence.
Police in riot gear reinforced by security personnel from around the country made 10 arrests because of scattered fights and misbehavior. About 2,000 people joined the anti-facist march while demonstrations by two far-right groups also gathered up to 2,000 people, the police said.
Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in the Nordic European Union member country of 5.5 million. About 32,500 migrants and refugees arrived during Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015. The number came down to 5,600 last year.
“No Nazis in Helsinki!” shouted anti-fascist demonstrators.
Far-right marchers promoted the slogan “Toward freedom,” and many carried torches. Last week, a court banned a neo-Nazi group called Nordic Resistance Movement, but it took part in a march as the decision has yet to be implemented.
Finland was part of the Russian empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian Revolution, then nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War II.
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Two men were charged Tuesday in London with terror offenses over an alleged plot to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May, according to British government officials.
Both will appear before a court Wednesday in the British capital in connection with what officials say was a conspiracy to launch a suicide-knife attack on Downing Street, the official home of the prime minister.
News of the foiled assassination plot broke shortly after the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, Andrew Parker, had briefed the cabinet on the terrorist threat and informed ministers that his service had thwarted nine terrorist attacks this year.
He informed ministers of the plot during the briefing, although the information was held back from the media for several hours.
Both of the conspirators were arrested last week in raids by counterterrorism officers in London and Birmingham, according to police officials. One of the men, named as Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, is accused of preparing acts of terrorism.
He was allegedly carrying two improvised explosive devices, which were inert, when he was arrested November 28 in London. His suspected co-conspirator was named as 21-year-old Mohammed Aqib Imran. He was seized 90 minutes later in a raid on a house in Birmingham in the English Midlands.
Imran also is accused of previously trying to secure a fake passport in a bid to reach Libya to join the Islamic State affiliate in the North African country.
According to officials, both men were plotting a bomb assault on the security gates protecting the entrance of Downing Street. Rahman then allegedly planned to storm Number Ten, wearing a suicide vest and using pepper spray and a knife, in an effort to kill Theresa May.
A Downing Street spokesman said earlier that Parker had told cabinet ministers that while Islamic State had suffered serious defeats in Iraq and Syria, “this did not mean the threat is over, rather it has spread into new areas, including trying to encourage attacks in the U.K. and elsewhere via propaganda on social media.”
Missed opportunities
The disclosures about the Downing Street plot came hours after an official report was released on last year’s Manchester bombing and other terror attacks on the British capital. According to the report undertaken by David Anderson, British security forces had missed opportunities to thwart the Manchester attack. The report confirmed that the ringleader of the London Bridge knifing spree had been under investigation by MI5.
The Anderson report revealed that the Manchester suicide bomber, British-Libyan Salman Abedi, had been flagged for closer scrutiny by the security services and that his bombing of the audience at an Ariana Grande concert in which 22 people died could have been averted “had the cards fallen differently.”
He said MI5 investigators had misinterpreted intelligence on Abedi. His case was due to be considered at a meeting scheduled for nine days after his May 2016 attack at the Manchester Arena.
But Anderson, a former terrorism law reviewer asked by the government to review the recent spate of terror attacks, concluded there is “no cause for despair.” Most terror plots continued to be foiled before they are launched, he said.
Downing Street security
Downing Street is heavily protected by fortified gates and armed police officers. Analysts say the chances of the men gaining entrance to the prime minister’s residence would have been remote.
Stringent protective measures were first put in place in the 1970s, and were tightened during the 1980s when Irish republicans launched attacks on the British mainland.
In 1991, the IRA managed to breach security, launching a homemade mortar bomb attack on Number 10. The mortars fell in the garden, but the explosions prompted officials and ministers to dive for cover.
The nearest the IRA got to killing a British prime minister was in 1984 when they targeted the hotel Margaret Thatcher and top officials were staying in for that year’s annual Conservative party conference in Brighton on Britain’s south coast. Thatcher was uninjured, but several ministers were seriously wounded in the bombing.
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A war on food waste in France, where supermarkets are banned from throwing away unsold food and restaurants must provide doggy bags when asked, has helped it secure the top spot in a ranking of countries by their food sustainability.
Japan, Germany, Spain and Sweden rounded out the top five in an index published the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which graded 34 nations based on food waste, environment-friendly agriculture and quality nutrition.
It is “unethical and immoral” to waste resources when hundreds of millions go hungry across the world, Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said at the launch of the Food Sustainability Index 2017 on Tuesday.
“We are all responsible, every person and every country,” he said in the Italian city of Milan, according to a statement.
One third of all food produced worldwide, 1.3 billion tons per year, is wasted, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Food releases planet-warming gases as it decomposes in landfills. The food the world wastes accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States.
“What is really important is the vision and importance of [food sustainability] in these governments’ agendas and policies,” Irene Mia, global editorial director at the EIU, told Reuters. “It’s something that is moving up in governments’ agendas across the world.”
Global hunger levels rose last year for the first time in more than a decade, with 815 million people, more than one in 10 on the planet, going hungry.
France was the first country to introduce specific food waste legislation and loses only 1.8 percent of its total food production each year. It plans to cut this in half by 2025.
“France has taken some important and welcome steps forward including forcing supermarkets to stop throwing away perfectly edible food,” said Meadhbh Bolger, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. “This needs to be matched at the European level with a EU-wide binding food waste reduction target.”
High-income countries performed better in the index, but the United States lagged in 21st place, dragged down by poor management of soil and fertilizer in agriculture, and excess consumption of meat, sugar and saturated fats, the study said.
The United Arab Emirates, despite having the highest income per head of the 34 countries, was ranked last, reflecting high food waste of almost 1,000 kilos per person per year, rising obesity and an agriculture sector dependent on depleting water resources, it said.
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Turkey’s president says the New York trial of a Turkish banker is a U.S. conspiracy being staged to “blackmail” and “blemish” his country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke Tuesday in Ankara, Turkey. His comments came as the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla continued in its second week.
Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab described criminal activities he was forced to divulge after he pleaded guilty to seven charges in October and became a government cooperator. His testimony likely will win him leniency at sentencing.
The defense says Atilla is “not corrupt.”
Erdogan says the trial is a ploy to distract Turkey while Washington hatches plans to strengthen Syrian Kurdish groups Turkey considers to be terrorists.
U.S. prosecutors say claims the trial resulted from political maneuvering are “ridiculous.”
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Ukrainian security forces stormed Mikheil Saakashvili’s Kyiv apartment and arrested the former Odesa governor, now an adamant opponent of President Petro Poroshenko, accusing him of criminal ties with ousted ex-leader Viktor Yanukovych.
Police used tear gas or pepper spray on protesters and Saakashvili appeared on the roof of the building during the drama, shaking his fist and accusing Poroshenko of being a traitor and a thief before being dragged away by security forces.
As the events unfolded in the street, Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko alleged at a briefing that an “organized crime” group led by Yanukovych, who is in exile in Russia, have financed protests organized by Saakashvili.
Saakashvili’s detainment prompted clashes between law enforcement officers in riot gear and supporters of the former Georgian president, who urged “all Ukrainians to take to the streets and drive out the thieves.”
“Do not let lawlessness happen. Do not let chaos happen. Do not let Poroshenko and his gang continue the robbery,” he said. “Ukraine is under a real threat. These people have completely usurped power.”
Shouting and shoving matches ensued, and after police hauled Saakashvili into a blue van, supporters attempted to lie in the street to keep him from being taken away.
Hours later, more than 1,000 supporters were on the scene, along with dozens of police, and cars were wedged close together in an effort to keep the van from moving away. The street was blocked with a makeshift barricade.
The commotion began shortly after 7 a.m. and was first made public by Saakashvili associate David Sakvarelidze.
“They’re breaking down the door at Mikheil Saakashvili’s home!” he wrote on Facebook, giving the address and apartment number.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said that Saakashvili’s residence was being searched as part of a criminal inquiry conducted by the Prosecutor General’s Office.
“Investigative procedures are indeed taking place. SBU officers are providing investigative support to a criminal inquiry of the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office,” SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian service.
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Hitlyanska did not specify the nature of the criminal inquiry, but the SBU later said Saakashvili was accused of “complicity with members of criminal organizations and concealing their activity by providing premises and by other means.”
At a news briefing, Lutsenko alleged that Saakashvili has held protests financed by allies of Yanukovych, who was pushed from power by pro-European protests in February 2014 and fled to Russia.
The prosecutor-general said the alleged Yanukovych allies included Serhiy Kurchenko, a businessman who also fled to Russia, and claimed that Saakashvili had received $500,000 in a bank transfer from Russia.
As the search unfolded, live videos shared on social media showed a chaotic and sometimes violent scene outside Saakashvili’s building, steps away from Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square — the focal point of the Euromaidan protests.
A shoving match between law enforcement agents and supporters of Saakashvili ensued as the latter tried to push their way into the apartment.
Saakashvili appeared on the roof, and officers quickly seized him and moved him away from the ledge before bringing him out of the building.
Video on Facebook showed dozens of riot police around the apartment building preventing people from entering.
Live at the Saakashvili showdown in Kyiv. Turning violent. Police using tear gas on provocative protesters. https://t.co/tg0eNGaZCU
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) December 5, 2017
The search of Saakashvili’s home was conducted two days after his Movement of New Forces party organized a rally in Kyiv calling for Poroshenko’s impeachment and for legislation that would allow it to take place. Poroshenko has accused the protest organizers of seeking to destabilize Ukraine, which is struggling with economic troubles and a deadly conflict with Russia-backed separatists in two eastern provinces.
Saakashvili was swept to power in Georgia’s peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003 and served as president of Georgia from 2004-13. He conducted major reforms and fought corruption in the former Soviet republic but was accused of abusing his power and is wanted in his home country on suspicion of trying to organize a coup there after leaving office, an allegation he denies.
In the wake of the Euromaidan protests that brought a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine, Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili — an acquaintance from university days — as governor of the Odesa region in 2015. Saakashvili surrendered his Georgian citizenship to take the post.
But Saakashvili resigned in November 2016, saying his reform efforts had been blocked by Poroshenko’s allies, and went into the opposition. Saakashvili was then stripped of Ukrainian citizenship by Poroshenko while he was in the United States in June 2017, a move he is challenging in court.
Weeks later, Saakashvili forced his way back into Ukraine and was found guilty of violating the state border. He paid a fine and has since been touring the country, speaking out against Poroshenko and trying to garner support for his fledgling political party, Movement of New Forces.
Saakashvili has indicated he wants to be Ukraine’s next prime minister, a post that he could theoretically hold as it is a position appointed by the president upon ratification by parliament. With his citizenship status in flux, under current law he is forbidden from officially running for president.
While well-known across Ukraine, Saakashvili and his party enjoy little public support, with nearly all polls showing putting them at around 1-2 percent.
Saakashvili recently claimed that Poroshenko was planning to force him to flee to another country to avoid extradition to Georgia.
During the rally on December 3, Saakashvili alleged in comments to Georgia’s Rustavi-2 television that Poroshenko and former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili have “agreed that a sentence on trumped-up charges will be quickly issued next week.”
Poroshenko’s office has not commented on the allegations or Saakashvili’s detention on December 5.
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A high-ranking United Nations official has arrived in North Korea to help lower tensions over the secretive regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile testing programs.
Jeffrey Feltman, the world body’s undersecretary-general for political affairs, left for Pyongyang Tuesday after a stopover in Beijing the day before. Feltman is the first U.N. official holding that rank to visit the isolated regime since his predecessor, Lynn Pascoe, in 2010.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday that Feltman will discuss “issues of mutual interest and concern” with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk during his visit, which ends on Friday.
Feltman’s visit comes less than a week after Pyongyang announced it had successfully test fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the U.S. mainland. The launch heightened tensions between the North and the United States, highlighted by months of insults between the regime and President Donald Trump.
The visit also coincides with a joint U.S.-South Korea air force exercise that began Monday.
Dujarric said Pyongyang issued an invitation for Feltman to visit back in September, during the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.
Feltman will also meet with the heads of various U.N. humanitarian programs operating in North Korea, including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the U.N. Population Fund. But Dujarric would not say if Feltman would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his trip.
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Russia’s justice ministry on Tuesday designated nine U.S. media outlets, including the Voice Of America, as “foreign agents.”
The ministry further listed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several of its affiliates, after warning last month they could be affected.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law in November empowering the government to designate media outlets receiving funding from abroad as “foreign agents” and impose sanctions against them.
Russian officials have called the new legislation a “symmetrical response” to what they describe as U.S. pressure on Russian media. On November 13, Russian state-funded television channel RT registered in the United States under a decades-old law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said FARA is aimed at promoting transparency but does not restrict the television network’s operation in the United States.
The U.S. State Department has condemned Russia’s law, saying it obstructs press freedom.
“New Russian legislation that allows the Ministry of Justice to label media outlets as ‘foreign agents’ and to monitor or block certain internet activity presents yet another threat to free media in Russia,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement last month.
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