An unmarked van drove into pedestrians on London Bridge, striking a number of people. There also were reports of stabbings nearby.
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Maltese voters went to the polls a year early Saturday in a snap election called by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat following an official investigation into allegations his wife owned a company related to the Panama Papers scandal.

Surveys showed Labour Party’s Muscat was likely to win a second, five-year term. But polls indicated one-fifth of voters were undecided, giving the National Force made up of the Nationalist Party and newly formed Democratic Party a slight chance.

The Panama Papers scandal, which detailed offshore companies and other financial data of the rich and powerful, exposed Malta’s energy minister and Muscat’s chief of staff as having acquired a company in Panama.

Muscat called new elections and ordered a magisterial inquiry midway through Malta’s first-ever stint at the presidency of the European Council after allegations surfaced in April that his wife also owned a company in Panama. The Muscats deny the allegations.

Setting up an offshore company is not illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, but shell companies can be used to avoid taxes or launder money.

After the publication of the Panama Papers last year, Muscat was criticized for retaining Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and chief of staff Keith Schembri, whose names figured in the document dump. They acknowledged that they acquired the companies but deny wrongdoing.

Since then, two other magisterial inquiries have been opened after money laundering and kickback allegations were made against Schembri by opposition Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil. Schembri denies any wrongdoing.

None of the investigations had finished before Saturday’s vote.

During the campaign, Busuttil, Muscat’s prime challenger, charged that accusations of corruption had hurt Malta’s financial services industry and would continue to damage the island’s reputation.
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For three years after Russia annexed Crimea, Washington officials quietly cautioned major U.S. firms about attending the annual St. Petersburg forum, where investors mingle with President Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants.

This year, the first forum since Donald Trump became U.S. president, such cautions were not issued, according to four people familiar with preparations for U.S. companies to attend.

Washington’s policy toward Russia is essentially unchanged under Trump, with the United States committed to maintaining sanctions on Moscow unless it complies with international demands about Ukraine.

Change in tone

But its approach this year to the St. Petersburg event — often described as Russia’s version of the Davos forum in Switzerland — reveals a change in tone, according to some people who follow U.S.-Russia trade relations.

Daniel Russell, the head of the U.S.-Russia business council, when asked if U.S. companies were feeling less pressure from the administration to stay away, said: “I think that’s right.

“Some of the companies, particularly in 2015, received calls from the U.S. government not to attend and I think that attitude has certainly changed,” he said.

The change in tone fits with promises Trump made during his election campaign to pursue friendlier ties with Russia.

Any sign of warming toward the Kremlin is highly sensitive for the White House, since Congress and the FBI are conducting inquiries into whether members of the Trump team had improper contacts with Russian officials before Trump’s inauguration.

Trump has denied doing anything wrong.

Asked about contacts with companies planning to attend the forum, a State Department spokesperson said: “We have an open dialogue with the business community, and ultimately companies are free to make their own decisions, in line with applicable laws and regulations.”

The forum in St Petersburg was in its second day Friday and there were signs of a more substantial U.S. presence than in previous years since the March 2014 annexation of Crimea.

US ambassador attends

U.S. ambassador to Russia John Tefft was at the forum, though he did not have a speaking slot. No U.S. ambassador attended in 2014, 2015 or 2016.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Moscow said his attendance was a routine part of his ambassadorial duties.

Major U.S. companies who sent senior executives, including oil major Exxon, Boeing, Chevron and JPMorgan, were represented at a similar level to last year, but several delegates at the forum said they estimated the U.S. presence to be numerically bigger than in previous years.

“We see a much larger number of people from the U.S., Canada,” said Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a state body that works with foreign investors.

“There is a better understanding (among foreign investors) that sanctions really did not work, the Russian economy continues to grow, Russia represents an attractive market and people should work with Russia,” he told Reuters.

Russian economy growing

Several U.S. delegates said that, politics aside, they were drawn to the forum by the fact the Russian economy had returned to growth after a slowdown.

The forum is a prestige project for Putin, a native of St. Petersburg. Foreign executives typically use their presence to signal to the Kremlin their enthusiasm for investing in Russia.

In 2014, when the Ukraine crisis first started, U.S. Cabinet officials including Secretary of State John Kerry made personal calls to chief executives of U.S. firms asking them not to attend, said a former U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The next year, senior U.S. officials below Cabinet level were charged with persuading American executives not to attend, and in 2016, U.S. officials brought up the issue in a low-level manner, the former official said.

The account of those conversations was confirmed by a second former official who served in the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama.

The guidance in later years was not necessarily to stay away, but that executives who did attend should keep their presence low-key, said several other people familiar with the discussions.

Ian Colebourne, who is CEO for Deloitte in the Commonwealth of Independent States and sits on the U.S.-Russia business council, said he was aware of officials giving guidance to executives in previous years, but added: “I haven’t heard anything this year.”

Two other sources familiar with the preparations for U.S. companies to attend also said there had been no guidance before this year’s forum, in contrast to previous years.

Green light?

The lack of contact from the U.S. government this year is being interpreted among business executives as meaning: “You can go,” said one of the two sources.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not receive any guidance from the administration about whether or not to participate in the event, a source with the Chamber said.

Still, some companies that did attend exercised caution, keeping a low profile.

The head of U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods, did not join the table of panelists at the main oil session of the forum. It was chaired by the head of Kremlin oil major Rosneft, Igor Sechin, who is on the U.S. sanctions list.

Like his predecessor as Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, now Trump’s Secretary of State, Woods made only brief remarks from the floor in a discussion about the energy industry.

Among other U.S. companies at the forum, JPMorgan Chase & Co., sent Daniel Pinto, Chief Executive Officer of its corporate and investment business, while Boeing sent Bertrand-Marc Allen, president of its international arm.

U.S. oil major Chevron sent its vice president for business development, Jay Pryor. He was also at the forum last year. A company representative did not reply to questions about any guidance from the administration.

“Let’s say the seniority of some of the teams is more senior this year, certainly compared to some prior years and that’s a positive sign,” Deloitte’s Colebourne said of the U.S corporate presence.

Robert Dudley, chief executive of BP, a British company with substantial business in the United States, said his impression was that this year there were more representatives of U.S. companies at the forum than previously.

“That would suggest they are not feeling that kind of pressure,” to curb their presence, he said.
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For the Italian government, it seemed like a recipe for success: create an official “Made in Italy” logo to defend the country’s finest food exports from an army of foreign impersonators.

On supermarket shelves worldwide, a star-shaped logo would mark out real Italian cheeses, hams, pasta and sparkling wines from those that only look or sound Italian, such as Parmesan made in New Zealand or Prosecco bottled in Brazil.

But Rome has discovered that even the simplest recipe can go wrong. Instead of unifying Italy’s food industry against a common enemy that is bagging billions of euros in sales, the government’s proposal for a Made in Italy certification quickly created bitter divisions.

A row has erupted over what it means to be truly Italian — should every single raw ingredient be made in Italy, for example — and now the project could be ditched altogether for lack of an industry consensus, according to two industry ministry sources who declined to be named as talks with food firms are ongoing.

“For now there is no final decision on whether to go ahead with the Made in Italy sign, we are studying it, we are doing technical checks,” said one of the sources, an industry ministry official who is working on the project.

“We will launch it only if it fully meets the requests of producers,” he said, adding that the food industry was split into several groups with conflicting views on the project.

The ministry announced the project at the end of last year, and began consultations with food producers in March, in response to industry complaints that foreign-made foods masquerading as Italian produce were costing the country billions of euros in lost export sales.

A logo guaranteeing Italian origin would enable exporters to grab some of the roughly 60 billion euros ($67 billion) in annual global sales generated by foreign imitations, according to Italy’s food producers’ lobby, Federalimentare.

Marketing experts agree. Brand Finance, a global consultancy that compiles an index of the world’s most valuable brands, estimates it could add up to 5 percent to the enterprise value of small- and medium-sized Italian food companies.

“Domestic companies would surely gain from such a logo given that Italy has a high reputation in the food sector and many of them are not well known outside the country,” said Massimo Pizzo, Italy managing director for Brand Finance.

However, Federalimentare’s members could not agree on a definition of Italian-made. Some took a hard line, insisting products be made entirely in Italy from ingredients sourced at home, while others argued for a less stringent approach.

‘If we open the door’

The consortium of producers of Parmigiano Reggiano, the king of Italian cheeses, insists on rigid standards for everyone.

“If we open the door to products with foreign ingredients, we are not talking of real Made in Italy … this is not the kind of help we are looking for,” said Riccardo Deserti, chairman of the consortium.

Under the consortium’s rules, recognized across the European Union, cheese can only be marketed as Parmigiano Reggiano, or by its English name Parmesan, if it is made according to a precise method within a restricted area around the town of Parma.

The consortium of Prosecco wine producers takes a similar stance, rejecting the idea of being put in the same authenticity category as products made with foreign raw materials.

On the other hand, some firms believe traditional Italian production methods should be enough to qualify for the logo.

Barilla, the world’s biggest pasta maker, wants to carry the Made in Italy logo though 16 of its 30 plants are abroad, including in the United States and Russia.

“We are Italian, we pay taxes in Italy and we run our foreign plants following the rules of the Italian quality,” Paolo Barilla, vice chairman of the family-owned business, told a food conference in March. A Barilla spokesman declined to make any further comment for this story.

One of Italy’s most identifiable food brands, the high-end food chain Eataly, draws a finer line on the issue.

It recently opened its first store in Moscow where an embargo on some European food imports forced it to make some cheeses from local ingredients. It sells mozzarella and burrata made in Russia, but not Parmigiano.

Olive and oak

Italian food producers can at least agree on one thing: Foreign rivals are competing unfairly by marketing distinctly Italian products, using words and symbols that suggest an Italian origin but listing the real provenance in fine print.

They point the finger at goods such as New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra’s Perfect Italiano range of Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses or Garibaldi Prosecco made in Brazil by the Garibaldi Winery Cooperative.

“I totally agree with the idea of a Made in Italy sign,” Eataly founder Oscar Farinetti told Reuters at the inauguration of the store, but did not say whether he sided with the Italian-made purists or the likes of Barilla.

Contacted by Reuters, a Fonterra spokesperson said the group markets the two cheeses using their Italian names and featuring the Italian flag because they were launched by Natale Italiano, an Italian who migrated to Australia in the 1920s.

“While the brand is proud of its heritage, its packaging is evolving away from featuring the Italian flag,” Fonterra said.

The group did not disclose the turnover of the Perfect Italiano products.

Garibaldi Winery did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

The Rome government had proposed a Made in Italy logo employing the symbols of the Italian republic: a star framed by olive and oak branches.

The project, however, was constrained by EU rules.

The government planned to include products if their last “significant transformation” happened in Italy, the ministry official said — meaning, for example, sausages produced in Italy using imported meat would qualify for the label while ham made in a foreign plant of an Italian producer would not.

This would bring the logo into line with the European Customs Code governing country-of-origin labeling, but the plan satisfied neither side in the food fight; the purists balked at the idea of foreign ingredients being allowed, while other firms argued the rules were too stringent.

Hence the impasse that threatens the project.

“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t use a different standard from the one used in Europe,” said the source.
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Reacting to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, leading scientific organizations say evidence clearly shows the world’s climate is changing and urgent measures must be taken to slow the warming of the planet.

The organizations say the scientific evidence is clear that human activity is behind the changing climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an independent scientific assessment body, warned that without additional efforts beyond those already in place, warming by the end of the century will lead to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts.

IPCC spokesman Jonathan Lynn said the scientific body finds that limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which together with adaptation can limit climate change risks.

“In its analysis of decision-making to limit climate change and its effects, the IPCC noted that climate change is a problem of the commons, requiring collective action at the global scale,” he said. “Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual players advance their own interests independently. … It is not clear at this stage how the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will affect future emissions.”

Deon Terblanche, head of the Atmospheric Research and Environment department at the World Meteorological Organization, said global warming will continue for as long as the world emits greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere

“Even a reduction in the emissions will not lead to a reduction in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because there is a cumulative effect and CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years,” said Terblanche. “… The climate will continue to warm in any case.”

In a worst-case scenario, he warned the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could result in an additional warming of the atmosphere of 0.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.
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The Trump administration is considering handing back two Russian diplomatic compounds along the U.S. East Coast after they were seized last year as punishment against the country, according to a report.

The compounds, one in coastal New York and the other along Maryland’s Eastern Shore, were believed by the Obama administration to have been used for intelligence purposes and were vacated on December 29 when former president Barack Obama sanctioned Russia for its alleged role in trying to sway the 2016 presidential election.

President Donald Trump is now deciding whether to return the two compounds to Moscow in exchange for certain concessions from Russia, according to reports in The Washington Post and Reuters.

According to several unnamed sources cited in the reports, Trump administration officials have spoken to Moscow about returning the compounds if Russia lifts a freeze on the construction of a U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg and stops harassing American diplomats in Russia.

The deal-making process is still in its early stages, though, and R.C. Hammond, a top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, told the Post that “the U.S. and Russia have reached no agreements.”

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said Wednesday Russia may try to take back the property through legal action “if these steps are not somehow adjusted by the U.S. side.”

The next senior-level meeting between the two sides will come later in June, and the issue is expected to be prominent on the agenda.
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British police investigating the Manchester Arena attack cordoned off an area around a car significant to the investigation as they hunted Friday for clues about the suicide bomber’s movements.

Officers put a 100-meter (100-yard) cordon in place around a white Nissan Micra in southern Manchester. They want to piece together Salman Abedi’s preparations for the attack at the Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people — and to learn whether others helped him.

“This is potentially a significant development in the investigation,” Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson said. “We are very interested in anything people can tell us about the movements of this car, and who was in it, over the past months.”

Police were also interested in “who may have had access to the car or who may have gone to and from it.”

As a precaution, people were being evacuated from the nearby Ronald McDonald House, which offers accommodation for families with children who are being treated in the hospital. A local hospital remained working as usual and even managed to host a visit by Prince William, who met with children wounded in the attack.

The second-in-line to the throne later visited Manchester Cathedral, where he praised the grit of the city and those who responded to the attack.

“Manchester’s strength and togetherness is an example to the world,” he wrote in a book of condolence. “My thoughts are with all those affected.”

William also met with police officers, expressing his gratitude for the actions of those first on the scene of the blast. Among them was 47-year-old police constable Michael Buckley, who treated the wounded even as he frantically searched for his own child.

Buckley was off duty and waiting for his 15-year-old daughter Stephanie when the bomb exploded. He found himself in an arena’s foyer, which he described as a scene of “absolute devastation.”

“I knew my daughter was in there somewhere,” he said.

Even so, he tried to help others and kept trying to contact her in the confusion. She had suffered a concussion and some crush injuries.

“I eventually met her in a hotel in the early hours of the morning,” Buckley said. “She just ran to me and grabbed hold of me but I couldn’t hold her because I was covered in other people’s blood.”

In a city traumatized by the events of last week, police have released new security camera images of the Manchester bomber’s last moments, hoping to jog the memories of the public to see if someone might remember something.

Even those who knew Abedi struggled to explain his actions. His cousins, Isaac and Abz Forjani, expressed shock in a BBC interview.

“It’s not easy being connected to 22 lost, innocent lives,” Isaac Forjani said. “The fact that the person that did this is related to us by blood is something that’s going to stay with me for the rest of my life.”

The two brothers were arrested by police after the attack and released without charge.

Ten men, aged between 18 and 44, remain in custody on suspicion of terrorism offences in connection with the attack. Six others, including a 15-year-old boy, have been released without being charged.
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The prosecutor at the trial of five men charged with killing Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in 2015 has urged jurors to find them guilty.

Wrapping up the state’s case Thursday, Maria Semenenko said their guilt was undisputed.

She also told the official Itar-Tass news agency that investigators had used special equipment during a re-enactment of the crime that placed the defendants’ mobile phones at the site of Nemtsov’s death when the shots were fired.

“Step by step, using the process of elimination, the investigators uncovered the entire chain of the crime, thanks to that expertise,” she told Itar-Tass.

The defense argued that no one could prove a motive for the killing.

Nemtsov was gunned down just steps from the Kremlin in February 2015. He was a popular opposition leader and a strong critic of Russian support for the rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Five suspects from Chechnya or Ingushetia were arrested. One of them confessed but later recanted, claiming he had been tortured.

A former Chechen security official, Ruslan Mukhudinov, is accused of paying the suspects to kill Nemtsov. He is at large.
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European leaders expressed dismay and anger in equal measure Thursday at President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States, the world’s second-worst polluter, from the landmark Paris climate accord.

They saw it as rebuke and warned it would make it harder to slow the pace of climate change. Government officials in several major European capitals said the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 agreement would further strain a Western alliance they worry is unraveling.

Others said the move would affect America’s standing in the world and undermine the country’s traditional global leadership role as it breaks with virtually every other nation on the issue of climate change.

The European Union’s climate change commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, said the announcement “has galvanized us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new, broad, committed leadership. Europe and its strong partners all around the world are ready to lead the way.”

The president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said: “It is a matter of trust and leadership. This decision will hurt the U.S. and the planet.”

‘Small’ America

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal group of lawmakers in the European Parliament, tweeted a report on the impact of rising sea levels on Hawaii, adding: “Make America small again.”

And Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, tweeted that the city hall there “will be illuminated with green to affirm our will to implement” the Paris Agreement.

Environmental NGOs were scathing in their reaction. Greenpeace said: “By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Trump has turned the U.S. from a climate leader into a climate deadbeat.”

The leaders of Germany, France and Italy issued a joint statement expressing “regret” at the decision.

European leaders lobbied Washington with mounting urgency in recent weeks, imploring the Trump administration not to break with the agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Ever since Trump blasted the accord during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying it would cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars with no tangible environmental benefit, European leaders have been bracing themselves for him to fulfill his pledge to break with the Paris pact.

They made strenuous efforts to dissuade Trump last month at the Group of Seven summit in Sicily, where a frustrated German Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighted the isolation of the U.S. in climate change discussions as a matter of 6-1.

Economic argument

In March, European leaders pursued a new tactic — with Canadian and U.S. business support — by making an economic argument, warning that if the U.S. withdrew, it would miss out on commercial opportunities in clean growth and lose out in energy innovation and clean-energy job creation.

Even at the 11th hour, efforts to dissuade Trump continued. Senior European policymakers tweeted to him, asking him not to break with the pact. And alarmed lawmakers in the European Parliament warned “climate change is not a fairy tale.”

Just before Trump’s withdrawal announcement Thursday, a Vatican official, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, warned the break would be a “disaster for everyone,” but would be seen by the pontiff as a “slap in the face.”

“Saying that we need to rely on coal and oil is like saying that the Earth is not round,” the bishop said. He and some other European officials blamed the fossil fuel industry in the U.S., saying it has an outsized influence on the Trump administration.

At their first ever meeting last month, Pope Francis handed Trump a signed copy of his 2015 encyclical calling for protection of the environment from the effects of climate change.

The accord, agreed on by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aims to cut emissions blamed for global warming. The United States committed to reducing by 2025 its own emissions by 26 to 28 percent compared with 2005 levels. Scientists have said a U.S. withdrawal from the pact could speed up the effects of climate change.

Chinese officials said the move would damage trust among leading powers in multilateral negotiations. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said his country would honor its commitments on climate change. “China will continue to implement the promises made in the Paris accord,” Li said.

Legal response

Some European policymakers are now turning their focus to how they could obstruct the U.S. withdrawal by pursuing legal avenues.

On Wednesday, Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president and a lawyer, said at a conference of the Confederation of German Employers in Berlin that “the Americans can’t just get out of the agreement,” adding that “it takes three to four years” to pull out.

Other European policymakers want to explore ways of enticing American energy innovators and climate researchers to relocate to Europe, using tax advantages and government subsidies to attract them. And some are advocating the imposition of carbon taxes on U.S. exports to EU nations.

But leaders of Europe’s nationalist populist parties cheered the abandonment of the pact. Britain’s Nigel Farage tweeted: “Trump keeps election promise to ditch the Paris climate accord and everyone is shocked. It’s called democracy.”
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The Black Eyed Peas and Robbie Williams will join Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and other stars at a charity concert Sunday in Manchester, England.

Live Nation said Thursday that girl group Little Mix had also been added to the show being held in response to the Manchester bombing that took place at Grande’s concert in the city last week. Twenty-two people died at the show.

Katy Perry, Coldplay, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Take That and Niall Horan also will perform. The event, “One Love Manchester,” will take place at Emirates Old Trafford.

Tickets went on sale Thursday. Proceeds will go to an emergency fund set up by the city of Manchester and the British Red Cross.
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