Pope John Paul I, the shortest-lived pope in modern history, has moved a step closer to sainthood.

The Vatican said Thursday that Pope Francis has recognized the “heroic virtues” of John Paul I, who reigned for only 33 days before his sudden death in 1978.

His death fueled conspiracy theories that the former Cardinal Albino Luciani was murdered as part of a plot involving the Vatican bank, or perhaps committed suicide.

The move comes just days after the publication of a book that debunks the conspiracy theories. Pope Luciani: Chronicle of a Death, written by journalist Stefania Falasca, concludes that the man dubbed the “smiling Pope” died of a heart attack at age 65.

Falasca was involved in his beatification cause and had access to confidential Vatican documents, including the pope’s medical file.

Before John Paul I can be beatified, though, the Vatican still must confirm a miracle attributed to his intercession, and also a second miracle, before he can be made a saint.
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Lithuania said a growing rift between some eastern and western European Union states over issues such as migration posed a threat to the bloc at a time of increased Russian military assertiveness.

Frictions between ex-communist states in Europe’s East and the wealthier West have increased since the 2015 migration crisis and Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, as leaders try to quell popular disenchantment with the EU.

Nationalist politicians in Poland and Hungary have called for sweeping reform to bring more power back to member states at the expense of Brussels bureaucracy and refused to take part in efforts to relocate migrants from the Middle East.

“I believe it’s a worry,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told Reuters on the sidelines of a security conference in Warsaw, when asked about Polish and Hungarian assertiveness within the EU.

“We would like to see more cohesion,” he said. “I know who is gaining. Those who are not happy with our cohesion,” Linkevicius said, adding that he was referring to Russia. “We are taking it very seriously not to help those who would like to divide East and West.”

Lithuania, alongside Poland, has been particularly worried about Russia since Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

NATO has sought to reassure allies in the region by sending troops to the Baltics, Poland and the Black Sea, setting up a network of NATO outposts, holding more exercises and preparing a rapid response force.

Some western officials have expressed concern that parts of the Baltic states, which have large ethnic Russian minorities, could be seized by Moscow, much as Russia took control of Crimea.

Linkevicius said good relations with EU powerhouses Germany and France within the EU were crucial because of their ability to help militarily.

Poland, in particular, has seen ties with Paris and Berlin deteriorate since 2015, when the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party took power, over issues such as military procurement, wartime reparations and the EU’s single market rules.

Reporting by Justyna Pawlak; editing by Ralph Boulton.
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Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year’s presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts.

Tweets by Russia-backed accounts such as “America_1st_” and “BatonRougeVoice” on October 7, 2016, actively pivoted away from news of an audio recording in which Trump made crude comments about groping women, and instead touted damaging emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.

Since early this year, the extent of Russian intrusion to help Trump and hurt Clinton in the election has been the subject of both congressional scrutiny and a criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. In particular, those investigations are looking into the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

AP’s analysis illuminates the obvious strategy behind the Russian cyber meddling: swiftly react, distort and distract attention from any negative Trump news.

The AP examined 36,210 tweets from Aug. 31, 2015, to Nov. 10, 2016, posted by 382 of the Russian accounts that Twitter shared with congressional investigators last week. Twitter deactivated the accounts, deleting the tweets and making them inaccessible on the internet. But a limited selection of the accounts’ Twitter activity was retrieved by matching account handles against an archive obtained by AP.

“MSM [the mainstream media] is at it again with Billy Bush recording … What about telling Americans how Hillary defended a rapist and later laughed at his victim?” tweeted the America_1st_ account, which had 25,045 followers at its peak, according to metadata in the archive. The tweet went out the afternoon of Oct. 7, just hours after The Washington Post broke the story about Trump’s comments to Bush, then host of Access Hollywood, about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, saying, “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

Within an hour of the Post’s story, WikiLeaks unleashed its own bombshell about hacked email from Podesta’s account, a release the Russian accounts had been foreshadowing for days.

“WikiLeaks’ [founder Julian] Assange signals release of documents before U.S. election,” tweeted both “SpecialAffair” and “ScreamyMonkey” within a second of each other on Oct. 4. “SpecialAffair,” an account describing itself as a “Political junkie in action,” had 11,255 followers at the time. “ScreamyMonkey,” self-described as a “First frontier.News aggregator,” had 13,224. Both accounts were created within three days of each other in late December 2014.

Twitter handed over the handles of 2,752 accounts it identified as coming from Russia’s Internet Research Agency to congressional investigators ahead of the social media giant’s Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 appearances on Capitol Hill. It said 9 percent of the tweets were election-related but didn’t make the tweets themselves public.

That makes the archive the AP obtained the most comprehensive historical picture so far of Russian activity on Twitter in the crucial run-up to the Nov. 8, 2016, vote. Twitter policy requires developers who archive its material to delete tweets from suspended accounts as soon as reasonably possible, unless doing so would violate the law or Twitter grants an exception. It’s possible the existence of the deleted tweets in the archive obtained by the AP runs afoul of those rules.

Earlier activity

The Russian accounts didn’t just spring into action at the last minute. They were similarly active at earlier points in the campaign.

When Trump reversed himself on a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace on Sept. 17, declaring abruptly that Obama “was born in the United States, period,” several Russian accounts chimed in to echo Trump’s subsequent false claim that it was Clinton who had started the birther controversy.

Others continued to push birther narratives. The Russian account TEN_GOP, which many mistook for the official account of the Tennessee Republican Party, linked to a video that claimed that Obama “admits he was born in Kenya.” But the Russian accounts weren’t in lockstep. The handle “hyddrox” retweeted a post by the anti-Trump billionaire Mark Cuban that the “MSM [mainstream media] is being suckered into chasing birther stories.”

On Sept. 15, Clinton returned to the campaign trail following a bout with pneumonia that caused her to stumble at a 9/11 memorial service.

The Russian account “Pamela_Moore13” noted that her intro music was “I Feel Good” by James Brown — then observed that “James Brown died of pneumonia,” a line that was repeated at least 11 times by Russian accounts, including by “Jenn_Abrams,” which had 59,868 followers at the time.

According to several obituaries, Brown died of congestive heart failure related to pneumonia.

Racial discord also figured prominently in the tweets, just as it did with many of the ads Russian trolls had purchased on Facebook in the months leading up to and following the election. One Russian account, “Blacks4DTrump,” tweeted a Trump quote on Sept. 16 in which he declared “it is the Democratic party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow & the party of opposition.”

TEN_GOP, meanwhile, asked followers to “SPREAD the msg of black pastor explaining why African-Americans should vote Donald Trump!”
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The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court warned Wednesday that the situation in Libya “remains dire” and promised to seek new arrest warrants if serious crimes don’t stop.

Fatou Bensouda also demanded the arrest and transfer of suspects already subject to arrest warrants, including the son of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the former head of Libya’s Internal Security Agency and a Libyan military officer alleged to have been involved in the killing of 33 captives “in cold blood.”

Bensouda told the U.N. Security Council that the security situation in Libya “remains unstable with violent clashes occurring between various factions across Libya.” Widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by different parties to the conflict also have been reported, she said.

Arrests, torture, killings

Bensouda pointed to reports emerging that the bodies of 36 men were found in the town of al-Abyar, 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Benghazi.

“The bodies were reportedly handcuffed, showed signs of torture, and displayed bullet wounds to the head,” she said.

Bensouda also cited information that the Libyan National Army commanded by Gen. Khalifa Hifter has allegedly intensified restrictions on access to the city of Derna in recent months, blocking medicine and fuel from entering because of fighting with the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council.

She said hundreds of residents attempting to leave the city had been arrested, and she condemned airstrikes on a residential neighborhood that reportedly killed civilians, including 12 women and children.

Chaos in Libya

The overthrow of Gadhafi in 2011 spawned chaos in Libya. The power and security vacuum left the country a breeding ground for militias and militants including the Islamic State extremist group and al-Qaida affiliates. It has also made Libya a gateway for thousands of migrants from Africa and elsewhere seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.

Since 2014, Libya has been split between rival governments and parliaments based in the western and eastern regions, each backed by different militias and tribes. A U.N.-brokered deal in December 2015 to create a unity government failed, though talks have been taking place to form an administration to lead the country ahead of elections.

Bensouda told the council she is gravely concerned at reports of unlawful killings, including the execution of detained people, kidnappings and forced disappearances, torture, prolonged detention without trial, rape “and other ill-treatment of migrants in official and unofficial detention centers.”

She expressed concern at crimes against migrants transiting through Libya and said “such crimes may fall within the jurisdiction of the court.”

“Let me be clear: If serious crimes … continue to be committed in Libya, I will not hesitate to bring new applications for warrants of arrest,” Bensouda said.

Arrest warrants

As for Libyans already the subject of arrest warrants, Bensouda said her office is trying to confirm the current whereabouts of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the late dictator’s son, who is charged in an ICC arrest warrant with murder and persecution for his alleged role in the violent suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.

He was released from custody in June after more than five years in detention as part of a pardon issued by the Libyan parliament based in the country’s eastern region.

The ICC prosecutor also urged that Hifter transfer to the court without delay Mahmoud al-Werfalli, a Libyan military officer suspected of being behind a string of killings earlier this year in the city of Benghazi, including the killing of the 33 captives. Bensouda noted that Hifter “has publicly expressed gratitude for the work of the court in relation to Mr. al-Werfalli’s case.”

She said her office is also trying to locate Al-Tuhamy Mohamed Khaled, who is wanted for four crimes against humanity and three war crimes, including torture, persecution, cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity. The charges involve prisoners held by Libyan security forces during protests against Gadhafi’s regime in 2011.
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The European Commission said Wednesday it wants to cut emissions of carbon dioxide from cars by 30 percent by 2030 and boost the use of electric vehicles by making them cheaper and easier to charge.

The proposal stops short of imposing fixed quotas for emission-free vehicles and is more modest than goals already set out by some EU members. Still, European automakers said the commission’s targets were too drastic, and Germany’s foreign minister warned against the proposal.

Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic insisted that the plan is the most “realistic” compromise between Europe’s ambitions to blaze trails on clean energy and the costs that the continent’s powerful car manufacturers will have to bear to overhaul workforces and production.

Current targets require automakers to achieve the average permitted emission for new models in the European Union of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer for cars, or 147 grams for light commercial vehicles by 2021.

The new proposal foresees a further reduction of 15 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030, compared to 2021 levels.

Car companies that fail to meet those targets face substantial fines of 95 euros ($110) per excess gram of carbon dioxide – per car. Automakers that manage to equip at least 30 percent of their new cars with electric or other low-emission engines by 2030 will be given credits toward their carbon tally.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, an industry body, criticized the 2025 target, saying “it does not leave enough time to make the necessary technical and design changes to vehicles, in particular to light commercial vehicles given their longer development and production cycles.”

The lobby group also said the targeted cut of 30 percent by 2030 was “overly challenging” and called for a 20 percent reduction instead, saying that was “achievable at a high, but acceptable, cost.”

“The current proposal is very aggressive when we consider the low and fragmented market penetration of alternatively-powered vehicles across Europe to date,” the group’s secretary general, Erik Jonnaert, said.

Germany’s foreign minister wrote to the commission last week to say the new rules shouldn’t “suffocate” the ability of automakers to innovate.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said all European countries benefit from the jobs the auto industry creates and warned that the time frame for emissions cuts “mustn’t be too restrictive.”

The letter caused friction within the German government, which is currently hosting a two-week United Nations meeting on implementing the 2015 Paris climate accord.

“The contents of this letter weren’t coordinated within the Cabinet,” a spokeswoman for Germany’s environment ministry, Friederike Langenbruch, told reporters in Berlin.

Germany is predicted to fall short of its own climate goals, in large part due to continued high emissions from coal-fired electricity plants and vehicle traffic.

The European executive’s plan also includes 800 million euros in funding for the expansion and standardization of electric charging stations Europe-wide.

 
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Visiting Berlin in the midst of sensitive coalition talks, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire urged Germany to seize a historic window of opportunity to reform Europe, warning that the bloc could succumb to nationalism if they failed.

The visit comes six weeks after a German election forced Chancellor Angela Merkel into negotiations with parties, including the Free Democrats (FDP), that are sceptical of French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitious vision for Europe.

By holding talks with leading members of those parties, including FDP leader Christian Lindner, Le Maire said he hoped to convince members of the next German government to leave the door open to a European deal with France as they hammer out a coalition blueprint for the next four years.

“We are of the view that there is a unique window of opportunity to improve the situation and make the eurozone stronger,” Le Maire said.

“I hope that they will take into account the necessity to

preserve a room of maneuver for negotiation,” he added.

“Because if everything is already decided in the German coalition agreement, what should we negotiate? This is one of the key reasons for my trip to Berlin.”

After nearly a decade of economic and financial crisis, and following Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Macron is pushing for a leap forward in European integration, including the creation of a budget for the eurozone and closer cooperation in defense and migration matters.

Merkel has welcomed many of his ideas, but members of her own conservative bloc and the FDP are sceptical, particularly on French plans for the eurozone, fearing Germany will be asked to pay for the policy failures of reform-wary southern states.

Europe faces choice

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Lindner, Le Maire said he believed that the differences could be overcome.

“None of the difficulties are insurmountable. I found a man who is conscious of his political responsibilities, conscious of his historic responsibilities,” he said.

Earlier in a speech to a Franco-German business forum, Le Maire likened the current situation in the eurozone to standing in the middle of a strong-flowing river where the currents were most dangerous.

He said Europe faced a choice: turn back to the shore from where they came, embracing nationalism and isolation, or say “now is the time” and press on to the opposite bank by pursuing closer integration of the eurozone.

“That status quo is not an option,” Le Maire said.

He spelled out four steps for a reform of the 19-nation single currency bloc. In the first, Europe would complete its banking union, capital markets union and harmonise its tax regimes, particularly in the area of corporate taxes.

Second, Europe would bolster its rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and third, it would introduce a budget for the eurozone to fund investments in areas such as transport, energy and artificial intelligence, and help the bloc cope with economic shocks.

In a last step, member states could appoint a finance minister for the eurozone, he said.

Switching between fluent German and French, Le Maire said Franco-German working groups should be created to discuss reform on a “weekly or even daily basis.” He said other countries should be brought into the process, naming Spain and Italy.

In his speech to the business forum, Le Maire urged the bloc to unite in pushing back against powers like China and the United States that he said were determined to shape the world according to their national interests.

German politicians have been sceptical of Macron’s “l’Europe qui protege” (Europe that protects) pledge, fearful of a return to old-fashioned French protectionism.

But Le Maire said Europe should no longer be “naive” in the face of economic challenges from abroad, accusing the Chinese of killing off the European solar panel industry and the Americans of using extra-territorial sanctions to shape global trade rules in their favor.

“Europe needs to stop being scared of its own shadow,” Le Maire said. “Divided we are nothing. Together we are everything.”

 
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Russia clashed with Western nations Tuesday over a report blaming Syria for a deadly chemical weapons attack, with Moscow dismissing its findings as “mythical or invented” and the U.S. backing its finger-pointing at President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The debate in the Security Council during a meeting on the report reflected the sharp differences between Russia, Syria’s most important ally, and Western countries that have backed Assad’s opponents.

It also raised serious questions about whether the mandate of the experts who issued the report will be renewed — and whether anyone in Syria will ever be held accountable for using chemical weapons, which are banned internationally.

Russia and the United States have circulated rival resolutions to extend the experts’ body, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM. Its mandate expires Nov. 14.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council that a revised U.S. draft circulated Tuesday included some points from the Russian draft, including the importance of high standards and sound evidence.

But she said Russia continues “to push unacceptable language only meant to undermine the investigators and divide this council.”

Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored council resolution Oct. 24 that would have renewed the mandate of the experts from the United Nations and the international chemical weapons watchdog for a year. It said it wanted to wait to see the JIM report on the sarin nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun and a mustard gas attack at Um Hosh in Aleppo in September 2016.

Two days later, the JIM reported its leaders were “confident” that Syria was responsible for an aerial attack on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 using sarin that killed about 100 people and affected about 200 others who survived “acute exposure” to the nerve agent. The conclusion supported the initial findings by the United States, France and Britain.

The experts also said they were “confident” the Islamic State extremist group was responsible for the Um Hosh attack using mustard gas.

Assistant Secretary-General Edmond Mulet, who heads the JIM, told the council how experts reached their conclusions, including finding that the chemistry of the sarin used in Khan Sheikhoun was very likely to have been made from the same precursor, called DF, as the sarin in Syria’s original stockpile.

In September 2013, Syria accepted a Russian proposal to relinquish its chemical weapons stockpile and join the Chemical Weapons Convention. That averted a U.S. military strike in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

Mulet said the Security Council has “a unique responsibility” to deter all those using chemical weapons and “end the use of such weapons forever.”  

“I understand the political issues surrounding the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said. “However, this is not a political issue about the lives of innocent civilians. Impunity must not prevail.”

Russia’s criticisms

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, was sharply critical of the JIM and the report, especially the experts’ failure to visit Khan Sheikhoun, which Mulet said was for security reasons.

Safronkov derided the JIM for not pinpointing specific responsibility, asking: Is “an entire state is responsible?” He also complained that “while some continue to try to find this mythical or invented chemical weapons in Damascus, the region is seeing an increasing threat of chemical terrorism” that isn’t being addressed.

Deputy British Ambassador Jonathan Allen said Russia has advanced multiple theories about the Khan Sheikhoun attack, and when one gets debunked Moscow goes with something else.

“It’s one of the great tragedies that Russia is a country with hugely respected and impressive scientists, but also a country of great fiction writers,” he told several reporters. “And unfortunately the scientists of Russia are being ignored and the fiction writers are being indulged.”

Allen called Russia’s draft resolution to renew the JIM mandate “a cynical ploy to discredit a professional, independent and impartial body.”

“Russia is trying to shoot the messenger to cover up for the crimes of the Syrian regime,” he said.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, the last speaker, told the council the JIM report “is not neutral, nor is it professional.”

Its “wrongful” accusation against Syria is based on “the fabrication of evidence and the manipulation of information,” he said.

Ja’afari said Syria abides by the Chemical Weapons Convention and “considers the use of chemical weapons an immoral act that must be condemned.”
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Lithuania expects NATO to reach an agreement next year to shield Baltic countries with air defenses, plugging a gap in its security against Russia, its defense minister said Tuesday.

Since Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and began providing weapons and troops to separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, NATO has sent more forces to the Baltics, eastern Poland and around the Black Sea.

Lithuania, which borders the Russian region of Kaliningrad, wants NATO to permanently deploy anti-aircraft weapons in the Baltics or Poland — a move seen by Moscow as an unjustified military buildup on its borders.

“We expect so,” Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis told Reuters when asked if he saw an agreement shaping up for the NATO summit in 2018. “Air defense is one of the issues which we need to address. We also need to look at other domains, like NATO command structure reform, we need to move forward on all on these aspects,” he said, also calling for NATO to strengthen maritime defenses in the Baltics.

Karoblis spoke in Helsinki after meeting his counterparts from Northern Group countries, including the Nordic and Baltic states, Britain, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis also joined the meeting.

Karoblis said exercises should be considered by NATO after Russia’s Zapad war games unnerved the West in September.

Mattis told reporters after the meeting that the 12 nations stood together to reaffirm territorial integrity.

“It is clear that one nation thinks it holds some kind of a veto or strong influence over others, that is Russia. The country’s name came up repeatedly over the last 48 hours,” he said.
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EU diplomats will start sketching out a Brexit transition offer on Wednesday that would probably let Britain stay in the single market for about two years after it leaves the bloc in March 2019, EU officials said.

But some officials and diplomats involved in preparing for the first “orientation debate” among envoys from the other 27 EU states warned London should not assume it can clinch an initial deal next month to open talks on post-Brexit relations. Some governments see benefits in making Britain wait for it.

An EU official familiar with Wednesday’s agenda said states would be asked their views on the “scope of the transition period, its length” and whether special regulations would be needed to enforce EU rules in Britain, which will no longer be a member but wants to maintain full access to EU markets.

Several officials who spoke to Reuters said that in the transition period Britain would have to abide by all EU laws, even if they are changed during that period, but would have no influence over them. “Anything else would be too complicated,” a second official said. Two others expressed the same view.

“The EU view on the transition period and the future will in a way be a moment of truth, exposing all the lies of those who campaigned for Brexit saying that Britain will be able to have the cake and eat it,” a third official said.

Wednesday’s discussions will also seek to gather views on the future trade relationship with London that is to follow a transition, which may finish in December 2020, at the end of the current seven-year EU budget period.

EU leaders told Prime Minister Theresa May last month they were not ready to negotiate post-Brexit arrangements until London offered more concessions on its “divorce’’ terms. But they held out the prospect of opening such talks at a summit in mid-December and ordered their officials to start preparing among the 27 for a move to this new phase of talks.

Brief encounter

British Brexit Minister David Davis is expected in Brussels on Friday for the first negotiations since that mid-October summit with May. But the anticipated brief encounter with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is not expected to produce a breakthrough on how much Britain will pay the EU on leaving.

Diplomats and officials said the continued slow pace of the divorce talks was increasing the possibility that EU leaders would again refuse next month to open trade talks. They said some may already be considering that as a useful tactic against Britain, which is anxious to prevent businesses relocating investment.

“Some believe that the worse it gets for the British, the better for us … that maybe we could delay it all until for instance March, increasing the uncertainty and triggering the contingency plans in the corporate sector,” the first EU official said.

“That would be ruthless and risky, but people have different views on what is risky.”

An EU diplomat involved in negotiations said he expected envoys also to discuss how to handle a possible failure next month to open the next phase of talks if May refuses to meet EU demands.

“What do we do if they (the British) don’t move?” he said.

Some continental negotiators believe British anxiety about businesses starting to shift investments in the new year if there is no transition deal could be to Brussels’ advantage.

Officials said Britain’s full membership in the single market, even during a transition, is not a given. “There is no up-front agreement on that. It is part of a bigger package. For instance it is not feasible to expect they would be in the single market … but not pay into the EU budget,” one said.

There will be one or two more meetings of EU envoys before they expect to agree what in detail they might offer Britain in terms of a transition period, officials said. The results of these discussions will not be presented to the British, however, until after leaders have agreed to open a new phase of talks.

 
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