The worldwide “ransomware” cyberattacks appeared to ease Monday, although thousands more computers, mostly in Asia, were hit as people signed in at work for the first time since the infections spread to 150 countries three days ago.

Health officials in Britain, where surgeries and doctors’ appointments in its national health care system had been severely impacted Friday, were still having problems Monday. But health minister Jeremy Hunt said it was “encouraging” that a second wave of attacks had not materialized.

He said “the level of criminal activity is at the lower end of the range that we had anticipated.”

In the United States, Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump, told the ABC television network the global cybersecurity attack is something that “for right now, we’ve got under control.”

But he described the malware that paralyzed 200,000 computers running factories, banks, government agencies, hospitals and transportation systems across the globe as an “extremely serious threat.”

Cybersecurity experts say the unknown hackers behind the “WannaCry” ransomware attacks, who demanded $300 payments to decrypt files locked by the malware, used a vulnerability that came from U.S. government documents leaked online. The attacks exploited known vulnerabilities in older Microsoft computer operating systems.

During the weekend, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the clandestine U.S. National Security Agency had developed the code used in the attack.

Bossert said “criminals,” not the U.S. government, are responsible for the attacks. Experts believe Microsoft’s security patch released in March should protect networks if companies and individual users install it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country had nothing to do with the attack and cited the Microsoft statement blaming the NSA for causing the worldwide cyberattack.

“A genie let out of a bottle of this kind, especially created by secret services, can then cause damage to its authors and creators,” Putin said while attending an international summit in Beijing. He said that while there was “no significant damage” to Russian institutions from the cyberattack, the incident was “worrisome.”

“There is nothing good in this and calls for concern,” he said.

Even though there appeared to be a diminished number of attacks Monday, computer outages still affected segments of life across the globe, especially in Asia, where Friday’s attacks occurred after business hours.

China

China said 29,000 institutions had been affected, along with hundreds of thousands of devices. Japan’s computer emergency response team said 2,000 computers at 600 locations were affected there.

Universities and other educational institutions appeared to be the hardest hit in China. China’s Xinhua News Agency said railway stations, mail delivery, gas stations, hospitals, office buildings, shopping malls and government services also were affected.

Elsewhere, Britain said seven of the 47 trusts that run its national health care system were still affected, with some surgeries and outpatient appointments canceled as a result. In France, auto manufacturer Renault said one of its plants that employs 3,500 workers stayed shut Monday as technicians dealt with the aftermath of the Friday attacks.

Security patches

Computer security experts have assured individual computer users who have kept their operating systems updated that they are relatively safe, but urged companies and governments to make sure they apply security patches or upgrade to newer systems.

They advised those whose networks have been effectively shut down by the ransomware attack not to make the payment demanded, the equivalent of $300, paid in the digital currency bitcoin.

However, the authors of the “WannaCry” ransomware attack told their victims the amount they must pay will double if they do not comply within three days of the original infection, by Monday in most cases. The hackers warned that they will delete all files on infected systems if no payment is received within seven days.

 
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Austria’s junior government coalition partner chose a new leader Sunday and gave him the unprecedented authority he demanded as a condition for leading his party into expected early elections this fall.

Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz told reporters that senior officials of his People’s Party agreed to let him choose all ministers of any government he would head, as well as to nominate candidates for parliament that would include party outsiders.

Speaking after a closed meeting, Kurz said that the gathering also agreed to contest at least the next elections under a name change. Instead of the People’s Party, Kurz and other candidates would now run under the “List Sebastian Kurz – the new People’s Party.”

“We have decided to start a movement,” Kurz told reporters.  “We’re going to rely on proven forces from within the People’s Party, but at the same time we’re going to bring new people on board.”

The power grab is significant in a party where provincial governors have historically had an outsize say in running federal affairs, including pushing through ministerial appointments and overriding major policy decisions by the federal leader.

With few exceptions, that has led party heads to resign in frustration in recent decades. The latest, Reinhold Mitterlehner, threw in the towel Wednesday after less than three years as party leader and vice chancellor.

The center-right People’s Party is now a distant third among voters. But Kurz, a telegenic 30-year old, regularly tops political popularity polls.

That is due in part for his embrace of a harder line on immigrants and other positions of the right-wing Freedom Party, which leads in voter support. But he avoids that party’s xenophobic polemics, as he walks the line between keeping People’s Party supporters and attracting Freedom Party backers.

Acceptance of Kurz’s demands reflects recognition by the party’s power-brokers that refusal would mean an almost certain slide in voter support.

The often cantankerous People’s Party-Social Democratic coalition has shown increased signs of fraying over the past months. Still, Social Democratic Chancellor Christian Kern had resisted People’s Party calls to move up elections from next year.

But as People’s Party officials gathered Sunday he told state broadcaster ORF: “I assume that there will certainly be an election this fall.”
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Paris bid leaders want to capitalize on the sense of optimism surrounding new President Emmanuel Macron to beat Los Angeles and secure the Olympic Games in 2024 — not 2028.

With the IOC currently assessing a proposal to award the next two Olympics — one to each city — Paris officials insist the French capital city is the right choice for 2024.

The 39-year-old Macron, France’s youngest-ever president, officially took office on Sunday as the IOC evaluation commission started a three-day visit to Paris.

“Our team has a new member, the new President of France, Emmanuel Macron,” bid leader Tony Estanguet said on Sunday. “He’s been a fantastic supporter of our bid from the beginning. He will be with us all the way to Lima and hopefully beyond.”

Los Angeles and Paris are the only two bidders left for the 2024 Games, which will be awarded in September at a meeting of Olympic leaders in Peru. The race began with five cities, but Rome, Hamburg, Germany, and Budapest, Hungary, all pulled out.

The IOC has four vice presidents looking into the prospect of awarding the 2024 and 2028 Games at the same time in September.

“We have one goal during these few days: to convince you that Paris is the right city, with the right vision, at the right moment,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said. “The right city with world-class venues and accommodation, and the best public transport in the world, ready right now.”

International Olympic Committee members were in Los Angeles earlier this week to meet with the U.S. bid leaders and inspect their planned venues. While Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appeared at least willing to consider hosting the 2028 Olympics if the city isn’t awarded its first choice of 2024, Hidalgo said Paris is set for the earlier edition.

“With financial and political stability and support, we are ready right now,” Hidalgo said. “At the right moment, as the no risk option.”

Patrick Baumann, the chair of the IOC evaluation commission, said Sunday’s discussions with Paris leaders focused solely on their project for 2024.

“Right now we are still in a process where we assess a potential candidacy for 2024,” Baumann told a press conference. “2024-2028 was not a matter of discussion.” 

The French government has pledged one billion euros ($1.1 billion) of support for the Paris bid and Macron is expected to confirm that amount. If Paris is awarded the 2024 Games, the infrastructure budget is expected to total 3 billion euros, with operational costs of 3.2 billion euros.

Paris is also betting on the compactness of its plans to make the difference. According to the bid dossier, 84 percent of the athletes will be able to reach their competition venues in less than 25 minutes, and more than 70 percent of the proposed venues are existing facilities, with a further 25 percent relying on temporary structures.

Paris, which last staged the Olympics in 1924, failed in bids for the 1992, 2008, and 2012 Games.

With the pro-business and pro-EU Macron, Paris bid leaders have a strong supporter. The new president has already thrown his weight behind Paris’ bid, telling IOC President Thomas Bach over the phone of its “expected benefits for all French people.”    

Macron did not attend Sunday’s night gala dinner with IOC members in Paris but invited the evaluation commission on Tuesday to the Elysee Palace before they leave.

Meanwhile, the Paris team added another high-profile figure to their list of backers on Sunday as it unveiled France soccer great Zinedine Zidane as their latest ambassador.

“I was involved in several bids, but this one is really close to our hearts,” said Zidane, who also supported the Qatar bid to host soccer’s 2022 World Cup and was involved in Paris’s 2008 and 2012 failed bids.  

IOC members started their visit with a full day of discussions on Paris’ proposals that will be followed by venue visits on Monday and further meetings on the final day.

“Our friends of Paris 2024 presented us with an exceptional and well detailed bid presentation,” Baumann said. “We have two cities with a wonderful Olympic spirit. It’s difficult to give them less than 10 out of 10.”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives defeated their center-left rivals in a key state election Sunday in the country’s most populous region.

Exit polls showed Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union with a strong surge of support in North Rhine-Westphalia, the home state and traditional stronghold of her chief rival, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, who is challenging the German leader in the national election in late September.

Schulz conceded Sunday’s loss, saying, “This is a difficult day for the Social Democrats, a difficult day for me personally as well.  I come from the state in which we took a really stinging defeat today.”

He urged his party to focus on the September 24 vote, saying, “We will sharpen our profile further.  We have to as well.”

The exit polls showed the Christian Democrats winning 34.5 percent of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, home to 17.9 million people, nearly a quarter of the German population, with the Social Democrats at 30.5 percent.  Other parties trailed far behind the two leaders.

The conservatives’ general-secretary, Peter Tauber, said the Christian Democratic Union “has won the heartland of the Social Democrats.”

 
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Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $124 billion Sunday for his ambitious new Silk Road plan to forge a path of peace, inclusiveness and free trade, and called for the abandonment of old models based on rivalry and diplomatic power games.

China has touted what it formally calls the Belt and Road initiative as a new way to boost global development since Xi unveiled the plan in 2013, aiming to expand links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond underpinned by billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

China’s most important diplomatic event of the year, the two-day summit offers Xi another chance to bolster China’s global leadership ambitions as U.S. President Donald Trump promotes “America First” and questions existing global free trade initiatives like NAFTA.

Trade and economic development

“We should build an open platform of cooperation and uphold and grow an open world economy,” Xi told the opening of the summit.

Xi said the world must create conditions that promote open development and encourage the building of systems of “fair, reasonable and transparent global trade and investment rules.”

 “Trade is the important engine of economic development,” Xi said.

He said the world must promote the multilateral trade system, the establishment of free trade regions, and the facilitation of free trade.

Big funding boost

Xi pledged a massive funding boost to the new Silk Road, including an extra 100 billion yuan ($14.50 billion) into the existing Silk Road Fund, 380 billion in loans from two policy banks and 60 billion yuan in aid to developing countries and international institutions in new Silk Road countries.

In addition, Xi said China would encourage financial institutions to expand their overseas yuan fund businesses to the tune of 300 billion yuan.

Xi did not give a timeframe for the new loans, aid and funding pledged Sunday. Leaders from 29 countries are attending the forum, which ends Monday.

Western unease

Some Western diplomats have expressed unease about both the summit and the plan as a whole, seeing it as an attempt to promote Chinese influence globally.

China has rejected criticism of the plan and the summit, saying the scheme is open to all, is a win-win, and aimed only at promoting prosperity.

“What we hope to create is a big family of harmonious co-existence,” Xi said, adding pursuit of the initiative will not resort to outdated geopolitical maneuvering.

“China is willing to share its development experience with all countries. We will not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. We will not export our system of society and development model, and even more will not impose our views on others,” Xi said.

“In advancing the Belt and Road, we will not retread the old path of games between foes,” he said. “Instead we will create a new model of cooperation and mutual benefit.”

Xi: Road open to all

Xi said the new Silk Road would be open to all, including Africa and the Americas, which are not situated on the traditional Silk Road.

“No matter if they are from Asia and Europe, or Africa or the Americas, they are all cooperative partners in building the Belt and Road,” he said.

Some of China’s most reliable allies and partners are at the forum, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

There are also several European leaders attending, including the prime ministers of Spain, Italy, Greece and Hungary.
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Former President Mauno Koivisto, who in the 1980s and 1990s guided Finland from the shadow of the crumbling Soviet Union and into the European Union, has died at a hospital in Helsinki. He was 93.

The office of the Finnish presidency announced the death early Saturday. Koivisto’s wife, Tellervo, said earlier this year that he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

The son of a ship’s carpenter, Koivisto, a Social Democrat, served two six-year presidential terms between 1982 and 1994, a tumultuous period that followed the 25-year presidential reign of Urho Kekkonen. He earlier served twice as prime minister, from 1968 to 1970 and 1979 to 1982.

Koivisto is widely credited as president with strengthening the role of parliament, after his nationalist predecessor consolidated much political power within the office of the presidency.

Koivisto is also broadly acknowledged for building strong ties with the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, while also establishing rapport with U.S. President George H.W. Bush as Europe began in the late 1980s to witness the beginning of the end of communism. He also maintained strong ties with Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan.

In a statement Saturday, President Sauli Niinisto described Koivisto as a leader in “the generation that took part in wars and [the] following rebuilding, and which guided Finland to the path of current success and well-being.”

In his last interview four years ago, Koivisto was asked by the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper to summarize what he viewed as important in life.

“In life, it is generally wise to trust that everything will go well. It often pays off, even if you wouldn’t have believed” it would, he said.
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Portugal’s Salvador Sobral won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with a gentle romantic ballad that challenged the event’s decades-long reputation for cheesy, glittery excess.

Sobral sang his Amar Pelos Dois (Love For Both) in a high, clear tenor accompanied by quiet strings and a piano. Unlike the 25 other competitors who performed on a wide stage backed by flashing lights, bursts of flames and other effects, Sobral sang from a small elevated circle in the middle of the crowd, an intimate contrast to others’ bombast.

“Music is not fireworks, music is feeling,” he said while accepting the award.

Runner-up Kristian Kostov of Bulgaria wasn’t short on feeling — his power-ballad “Beautiful Mess” was awash in melodrama, the singer appearing almost wrung out by romantic turmoil.

Moldova’s Sunstroke Project finished a surprising third, with a bouncy, jazzy song called “Hey Mama”‘ that featured a clever stage routine in which the female backup singers hid their microphones in bridal bouquets.

Francesco Gabbani of Italy had led bookmakers’ tallies for most of the days leading up to the final, but he ended up placing sixth even though his act seemed the epitome of Eurovision’s cheerfully tacky aesthetics — singing a driving number about spirituality while accompanied by someone in a gorilla suit.

Eurovision, in its 62nd year, is aimed at apolitical entertainment. But the sweet intentions were soured this year when Russia’s participation was scuttled by host Ukraine over the two nations’ diplomatic and military conflict.

Russia is one of Eurovision’s heavy hitters, tied with Sweden for the most top-five finishes this century. But this year’s Russian entrant, Yuliya Samoylova, was blocked from competing by Ukraine because she had toured in Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula.

In response, Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 television is refusing to broadcast the contest, replacing Saturday’s final with a screening of the film “Alien.”

The Moscow-Kyiv split is a headache for Eurovision’s producer, the European Broadcasting Union, which strives mightily to keep pop and politics separate. Overtly political flags and banners are banned, and lyrics are monitored for provocative content.

In 2009, the EBU nixed the Georgian entry “We Don’t Wanna Put In,” a dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The union, however, has been criticized for not barring “1944” last year, allowing Russia-Ukraine tensions to fester.

The acrimony is ironic, since Eurovision was founded in 1956 to bring the recently warring countries of Europe together. It launched a year before the foundation of the European Economic Community, forerunner of the European Union.

From its launch with seven countries, Eurovision has grown to include more than 40, including non-European nations such as Israel and — somewhat controversially — far-off Australia.

The contest helped launch the careers of Sweden’s ABBA — victors in 1974 with “Waterloo” — Canada’s Celine Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988, and Irish high-steppers Riverdance, the halftime entertainment in 1994.
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Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is heading to China Sunday to join leaders of 27 other nations at the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) summit in Beijing.

The massive China-led project aims to revive the ancient Silk Road and maritime trade routes by expanding investment in infrastructure linking Asia, Africa and Europe.

While China plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in the ambitious vision, few details have been made clear on how the project will proceed.

Russia wants investment

A lack of specifics and long-term prospects for the project has led some observers to conclude China’s new Silk Road so far is about politics and symbolism. But analysts in Moscow say Russia is mainly in it for the money.

“First, Russia’s economy desires foreign investments and it hopes to get some funds through OBOR,” said Petr Topychkanov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Second, Russia wants to bring new drive to the dying Eurasian Economic Union by connecting it with OBOR. Third, Russia wants to compensate the vanished economic agenda of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) with the Chinese-led OBOR. Fourth, Russia wants to make European countries more nervous with the prospects of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation.”

China in the last few years has invested more than $300 billion in projects in One Belt, One Road countries, and Chinese officials say more than 50 agreements will be signed at next week’s meetings in Beijing.

Leaders attending the summit include the other two founding members of the struggling Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Belarus and Kazakhstan.

“Russian interest in the OBOR project in general is attracting additional Chinese investment into the Russian infrastructure and industry sectors,” said Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “Russia is also trying to achieve a high level of coordination between the Chinese OBOR policy and the Russian policy concerning the Eurasian Economic Union.”

Russia established the EAEU in 2015 with the aim of integrating economies of former Soviet states. However, critics say the Kremlin uses the group for geopolitics and influence, and other members have shown little interest in deepening economic ties.

Russia looking east?

Western sanctions against Russia over its military involvement in Ukraine have led some Russian officials and analysts to say Moscow will pivot to the east for its political and economic future.

“China did provide significant loans for the Russian state-owned companies currently under the Western sanctions, helping them a lot,” Kashin said.

Russia-China trade is recovering from a 2014-2015 slump and was up 26 percent in the first quarter of 2017, to nearly $25 billion. China’s exports to Russia rose 22 percent while China’s imports from Russia were up 30 percent in the first four months of this year.

“China is Russia’s most important individual trading partner. Its share is growing, and it is already a significant source of investment, loans and technology. However, it will take China a long time to overtake the EU in these roles,” Kashin added.

There has been no dramatic pivot by Russia away from the West and toward the East, but there is a gradual trend for trade in that direction.

“The share of the APEC countries, not just China, but Japan and Korea as well, in Russian trade has been growing at the expense of the EU for a long time,” Kashin said. “The process did speed up after the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, but not dramatically. Turn to the East is inevitable since the European market for Russian commodities will likely have long-term negative growth, because of EU economic stagnation and industrial decline.

“However, building the necessary infrastructure and negotiating the trade deals with the Asian countries will take Russia years,” economic researcher Kashin added. “The historical dependence on the single European market will be overcome, probably at some point in the late 2020s to early 2030s.”

Developing relationship

Russia-China relations are developing steadily but are sometimes exaggerated by Russian officials for propaganda purposes.

“The leaders of Russia and China came to a point where they clearly realized the possibilities and limits of bilateral relations,” Topychkanov said. “Despite comments from some experts about the possibility of any kind of union between Russia and China — let it be political, economic, or military — there is no chance for such a union.

“Even the bilateral trust between both countries isn’t limitless,” the Carnegie associate added. “In short, Russia and China value the visibility of friendship between them, but they can’t transform it in deep-rooted strategic relationships and long-term, mutually beneficial economic cooperation.”

China’s New Silk Road initiative has attracted more interest as the United States under President Donald Trump has looked inward and pulled out of global trade deals.

But Russia does not see OBOR as a future substitute or even competitor for trade pacts like the formerly U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“I doubt, that Russian officials think about OBOR and Russia in the context of global trade,” Topychkanov said. “For Moscow this remains to be the issue of both bilateral cooperation with China and regional economic networks.”

Olga Pavlova​ contributed to this report.
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The European Union’s police agency, Europol, says it is working with countries hit by the global ransomware cyberattack to rein in the threat and help victims.

In a statement Saturday, Europol’s European Cybercrime Center, known as EC3, said the attack “is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits.”

EC3 says its Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce, made up of experts in high-tech crime, “is specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation.”

The attack, which locked up computers and held users’ files for ransom, was believed the biggest of its kind ever recorded.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Center says teams are working “round the clock” to restore hospital computer systems that forced hospitals to cancel and delay treatment for patients.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Saturday that 45 public health organizations were hit, but she stressed that no patient data had been stolen.

Germany’s national railway says that departure and arrival display screens at its stations were hit Friday night by the attack. The company said it deployed extra staff to busy stations to provide customer information, and recommended that passengers check its website or app for information on their connections.

The railway said that there was no impact on actual train services.

Several cybersecurity firms said they had identified the malicious software behind the attack, which has apparently hit Russia the hardest.
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There is a “realistic possibility” Russia might try to interfere in Britain’s national election next month, Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary, said.

In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper published Saturday, the Conservative politician also said Russian President Vladimir Putin would “rejoice” if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party won the June 8 election.

Referring to Putin, Johnson said: “Clearly we think that is what he did in America, it’s blatantly obvious that’s what he did in France [where incoming president Emmanuel Macron’s emails were hacked], in the western Balkans he is up to all sorts of sordid enterprises, so we have to be vigilant.”

He said Putin wanted “to undermine faith in democracy altogether and to discredit the whole democratic process.” On Friday, Britain’s health system was subjected to a major cyber attack.

Johnson also told The Telegraph that rather than Britain having to pay a divorce bill for leaving the European Union, the EU could end up having to pay Britain because it had contributed to so many EU assets.

“They are going to try to bleed this country white with their bill,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported the EU might seek an upfront payment in 2019 of up to 100 billion euros ($109 billion). That sum was immediately rejected by British ministers.
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A large number of hospitals across Britain were hit by a cyber-attack Friday, shutting down their computer systems and forcing the cancellation of patient appointments.

According to Britain’s National Health Service, hospital computers were infected with a type of “ransomware” that blocks use of a computer system until victims agree to pay the attacker a ransom to free it up.

Photos posted on social media show infected NHS computers with the message “Ooops, your files have been encrypted,” and a demand for $300 worth of Bitcoin, an anonymous online currency.

At least 16 NHS organizations reported being affected by the ransomware attack.

While the affected hospitals were forced to turn away patients and divert ambulances to other facilities, the NHS said the attackers hadn’t breached any patient data.

“NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Center, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organizations and to recommend appropriate mitigations,” the health agency said in a statement.

The NHS said it was not attacked specifically, and the attack is “affecting organizations from across a range of sectors.”

Around the same time Friday, the Spanish energy ministry reported various cyber attacks aimed at Spanish companies, including telecom giant Telefonica, using ransomware software. It is not clear if the two hacking incidents are related.

Portugal Telecom was also hit by a cyber attack but no services were impacted, a spokeswoman for the company said.

 
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The United States Navy said Friday that a Russian jet flew within six meters of an American spy plane earlier this week over the Black Sea, but that the encounter was professional.

The Russian jet was scrambled to greet the U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon in international airspace Tuesday as the U.S. plane flew near Russian territory, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Russian pilot approached the spy plane “at a safe distance” in order to identify it as a U.S. aircraft, the statement said, noting that the U.S. plane changed its course after the encounter and the Russian jet returned to its base.

U.S. Navy spokeswoman Pamela Kunze said in a statement the encounter was conducted in a “safe and professional” manner, downplaying the proximity of the Russian aircraft to the U.S. aircraft.

“For aviation interactions, distance, speed, altitude, rate of closure, visibility and other factors impact whether an event is characterized as safe or unsafe, professional or not professional,” she said. “Every event is unique and any single variable does not define an event.”

Kunze said that Navy aircraft and ships interact with their Russian counterparts in international waters on a routine basis, but did not provide any further details about Tuesday’s encounter.

The incident is the latest in a series of close fly-bys between U.S. and Russian planes. In February, four Russian aircraft buzzed a Navy destroyer in the Black Sea, flying within 91 meters of the ship.

Last month, the U.S. military intercepted two Russian bombers in international airspace off Alaska’s coast. That encounter was similarly described as “safe and professional” by the Navy.
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Turkey’s state-run news agency says police have detained 62 former employees of the Istanbul stock exchange over their alleged links to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric blamed for last year’s coup attempt.

Anadolu Agency said the suspects were detained Friday in simultaneous police raids in Istanbul and five other cities. Detention warrants were issued for 40 other people, the agency reported.

The detained are suspected of being followers of Fethullah Gulen who the government says is behind the July 15 coup attempt. Anadolu said the suspects were removed from positions at Borsa Istanbul stock exchange following the attempt.

Gulen denies involvement in the failed coup.

Turkey declared a state of emergency following the attempt and dismissed some 100,000 people from government jobs while arresting more than 47,000 people.
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned home Thursday after surgery in Spain to fix his eye that was damaged in an attack and immediately roused his supporters to action.

Navalny suffered a severe chemical burn in his right eye last month when an attacker doused him with green antiseptic. His supporters identified the attacker as a pro-government activist. Police have failed to track him down.

Navalny urged his supporters in a YouTube video broadcast Thursday to attend anti-corruption rallies next month. He said the demonstrations are planned in 147 Russian cities.

Plans bid for presidency

The charismatic opposition leader intends to run for president next year. He said he would continue to travel widely to open his campaign offices.

Navalny shot to prominence with his investigations into official corruption and was a key driving force behind massive anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow in 2011-2012.

He also organized anti-government rallies in March, Russia’s largest and most widespread in years.

Trip to Spain allowed

Until his medical trip to Spain, Navalny had been denied travel documents for five years. He is serving a five-year suspended sentence in a dubious embezzlement case.

 He said Thursday that after his Moscow doctor strongly recommended he to travel abroad for eye surgery, he wrote to Kremlin human rights council chief Mikhail Fedotov to demand that authorities issue him a passport.

On Fedotov’s advice, he then sent the same request to Kremlin chief of staff Anton Vaino. Navalny said he also applied for a passport and received one the next day.

Navalny, who was operated on at a Barcelona clinic, said doctors expect the vision in his injured eye to be restored in several months.
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Bulgaria is seeking private investors to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube River, which was canceled five years ago, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

Sofia canceled the Belene project in 2012 after failing to find foreign investors and facing pressure from Brussels and Washington to limit its energy dependence on Russia.

Since then Bulgaria has opened a gas link with neighboring Romania and is working to connect its gas network with neighboring Greece, Turkey and Serbia to diversify its suppliers.

It hopes to privatize the nuclear plant project after it paid more than 600 million euros ($652 million) in compensation to Russia’s state nuclear giant Rosatom when it canceled the 10 billion euro project. Rosatom had agreed to provide the nuclear reactors.

Bulgarian authorities have already said that Belene could be built without state guarantees or obligatory long-term contracts for the government to purchase power from it.

“Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said the government is looking for a strategic private investor to develop the project,” the government’s press office said in a statement.

In December, the Bulgarian government said that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s biggest lender by assets, was ready to finance the Belene nuclear power project. China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has also expressed an interest in investing in the project.

During their phone call, Borisov and Putin also underlined their mutual interest in the construction of the natural gas hub on Bulgarian territory, the government’s press office said.

Plans for a hub at the Black Sea port of Varna, which would store and transport gas from Russia and the Caspian Sea to southeastern and central Europe, follow the cancellation of Russian gas giant Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline project, which would have shipped Russian gas under the Black Sea via Bulgaria to central Europe.
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The U.N.’s human rights chief urged Uzbekistan on Thursday to avoid “repressive policies” in its fight against Islamist radicalization, a growing threat throughout Central Asia, while welcoming a rapprochement with Tashkent.

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the first United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Uzbekistan since the post was created in 1993, said the former Soviet republic had agreed to work with his office after previously refusing to do so.

Commenting on President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s reform plans, which include an overhaul of the judicial system and measures to tackle religious extremism, Hussein said it was crucial to balance the latter with ensuring individual rights.

“As in other countries, I have emphasized that the answer to the risk of radicalization is not simply heavy-handed security measures and repressive policies which breed resentment and frustration, thereby making it easier for extremists to recruit new supporters,” he said.

President Islam Karimov, who died in September after 27 years in power, had been widely criticized for his government’s human rights violations, and Tashkent’s ties with the West hit their lowest point after troops violently suppressed unrest in the city of Andijan in 2005.

Hussein, describing the Andijan events as “terrible,” told a briefing: “While it is important to look forward, it also important to come to terms with past events and ensure that victims are not forgotten and their grievances are addressed.”

Hussein said he had had an hour-and-a-half meeting with Mirziyoyev, “in which we found much common ground and reached agreements on a number of concrete steps.”

Uzbekistan found itself in a global security spotlight after an Uzbek man living in Sweden was identified as the main suspect behind the deadly truck attack in Stockholm last month. Hundreds of Uzbeks are also believed to have joined the Islamic State militant group based in Syria and Iraq.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the foreign ministers of the other Arctic Council nations, Russia, Greenland, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland meet Thursday amid changes to the North Pole ice and a decision by the Trump administration about the U.N. Paris Agreement on Climate. Any changes to U.S. climate policy could have a direct impact on the lives of Alaskan Natives, who depend on the Arctic Sea to survive. VOA’s Cindy Saine reports from Fairbanks, Alaska.
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Montenegro’s historic port city of Kotor has earned the status of UNESCO World Heritage Site for the beauty of its well preserved medieval town. But Kotor’s international fame has become a source of trouble in recent years. Excessive construction is now threatening to diminish the town’s beauty and its reputation as one of the world’s top tourist destinations. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Syria was at the top of the agenda Wednesday as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came calling on President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But as VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports from the White House, the meetings touched on several other world hotspots.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday criticized what he called a destabilizing Russian military build-up near Baltic states and officials suggested the United States could deploy Patriot missiles in the region for NATO exercises in the summer.

U.S. allies are jittery ahead of war games by Russia and Belarus in September that could involve up to 100,000 troops and include nuclear weapons training —the biggest such exercise since 2013.

The drills could see Russian troops on the border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Russia has also deployed Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, its enclave on the Baltic Sea. It said the deployment was part of routine drills, but U.S. officials worry that it may represent a permanent upgrade to Kaliningrad’s missile capability.

Asked during a trip to Lithuania about the Russian missile deployment, Mattis told a news conference: “Any kind of buildup like that is simply destabilizing.”

The United States is ruling out any direct response to the Russian drills or the potential missile deployment.

But at the same time, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, raised the possibility that a Patriot missile battery could be deployed briefly to the Baltic region during upcoming NATO exercises in July that focus on air defense, known as Tobruk Legacy.

One of the officials said Patriots had not been previously deployed to the Baltics, although they had been in Poland. The officials stressed the Patriots, if deployed, would be withdrawn when the drills were concluded. That would likely happen before the Russian drills began, they said.

Mattis declined to comment directly on the possible Patriot deployment when asked by reporters after talks in Vilnius.

“The specific systems that we bring are those that we determine necessary,” Mattis said, saying that NATO capabilities in the region were purely defensive.

It was Mattis first trip to the Baltic states, who fear a repeat of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. The Baltic states are concerned about their lack of air defenses and are weighing upgrades in their military hardware.

Asked about any future Patriot deployment, Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite, standing next to Mattis, said: “We need all necessary means for defence and for deterrence, and that’s what we’ll decide together.”

The scale of this year’s Russian Zapad exercises, which date from Soviet times when they were first used to test new weapon systems, is one of NATO’s most pressing concerns. Diplomats say the war games are no simple military drill.

Estonian Defense Minister Margus Tsahkna told Reuters last month NATO governments had intelligence suggesting Moscow may leave Russian soldiers in Belarus once the Zapad 2017 exercises are over, also pointing to public data of Russian railway traffic to Belarus.

Moscow denies any plans to threaten NATO and says it is the U.S.-led alliance that is risking stability in eastern Europe.

The Kremlin has not said how many troops will take part in Zapad 2017.

 
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will welcome Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the State Department Wednesday, for talks expected to be dominated by the two countries’ differences over Syria and Ukraine. This will be the first time Lavrov has visited Washington since 2013, and analysts say the two men will have their work cut out for them, before both head to Alaska for a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council. VOA State Department correspondent Cindy Saine reports,
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Britain’s political centrists and liberals can only look on jealously. The victory of Emmanuel Macron across the English Channel in France’s presidential race is reviving talk in Britain of a progressive alliance to deprive the Conservatives of a likely landslide win in next month’s parliamentary elections.

The leaders of the country’s main opposition Labor Party, however, are rejecting out of hand any electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats and Greens, despite mounting calls from activists for them to do so.

“Labor is a national party and everyone needs to have the opportunity to vote for a Labor candidate,” senior Labor lawmaker John Ashworth told reporters Monday. “Politicians who try to do these backroom deals never, ever come out of it well.”

Last week, Labor candidates in local elections suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of the Conservatives, losing control of councils in the party’s traditional heartland territory of the industrial Midlands and the north, regions that favor Brexit — Britain quitting the European Union.

If the voting pattern is repeated in the parliamentary elections on June 8, Labor could be facing a wipeout as large as the one it suffered in 1983 at the hands of Margaret Thatcher, who secured a 144-seat majority in the House of Commons. One gloomy newspaper columnist quipped that the local election setback was “a bloodbath foreshadowing a full-on abattoir come June 8.”

Tactical voting

Nonetheless, Labor leaders also are discouraging supporters from engaging in tactical voting on election day, an idea touted by former Prime Minister Tony Blair to the fury of party stalwarts.

Blair and some other opposition party grandees have urged voters to back “progressive” candidates in the strongest position in their districts to defeat Brexit-supporting Conservative rivals.

Labor’s leader, the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn, is insisting against the facts, “We are closing the gap on the Conservatives.”

The Green Party has decided not to run candidates against Labor’s in London and the southern coastal town of Brighton, and it has demanded to no avail that Corbyn return the favor elsewhere. The Greens’ leader, Caroline Lucas, is accusing the Labor leader of paving the way for a Tory majority by ignoring calls for an election deal.

“We are going to wake up on June 9 and a lot of people are going to be asking themselves, ‘When will the left ever learn?’” she said Monday.

Lucas told BBC Radio, “We’ve still got a few more days where we could build on these alliances, which it isn’t just the Green Party asking for them, it is people up and down the country begging parties of the left and the center-left to get together to do grown-up politics and to be able to put in place a group of people who have a better chance of serving the interests of the people, rather than allowing a massive Tory landslide.”

Ideological battles

As an electoral annihilation approaches, the Labor Party — moderates and hard-left alike — appears more eager to focus on internal ideological battles and to position itself for an internecine fight after the election. The ideological divisions are spilling out publicly on the campaign trail as party members fight for the soul of their party and Labor candidates opposed to Corbyn distance themselves publicly from their leader.

Labor moderates see a huge defeat on June 8 as the only way of forcing Corbyn, who has weathered several attempts by them to oust him, to resign. As they see it, that would clear the path for a moderate to replace him. The party could then begin the arduous process of expunging the hard left from its ranks, modernizing the party and returning Labor to credibility, much as the Labor modernizer Tony Blair and his supporters did more than 20 years ago after Thatcher’s three-on-the-trot [one after the other] election victories.

Corbyn loyalists, many of whom are young entryists from far-left Trotskyite groups, are less interested in electoral politics, say their critics, and are focused on refashioning the party as a revolutionary protest movement, pure in ideology and untainted by the nasty compromises electoral politics require.

Some Labor stalwarts are turning away from the party’s tribal politics. A former Labor minister, Chris Mullin, a former darling of the Labor left and a one-time editor of the weekly Tribune newspaper, once the home of writer George Orwell, believes “the only way forward” is “an eventual pact between Labor, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens not to oppose each other in marginal seats.”

“It will be difficult for any party that is not the Conservative party to form a government on its own in the foreseeable future,” Mullin recently argued.

“It may take three or four election defeats for the penny to drop,” he added.

Even if the penny did drop [meaning: an understanding of the situation occurs] before June 8, it is not clear, thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system, that a ‘progressive’ electoral pact could even stop the Conservative juggernaut. Pollsters say a functioning progressive alliance would only reduce a likely Tory majority.

 
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Gibraltar is preparing for a post-Brexit setup in which its firms will have no longer access to the European Union market but will maintain a preferential relationship with Britain, a top Gibraltar financial official said on Tuesday.

The tiny British enclave on Spain’s southern tip, with a population of 30,000, is home to around 15,000 companies and is a major provider of insurance and gambling services.

“We are currently planning for a hard Brexit,” James Tipping, director at Gibraltar’s government body for financial promotion, told EU lawmakers in a hearing in Brussels.

He said Gibraltar did not expect to obtain a “special status” and was resigned to lose its access to the EU market after Britain leaves the EU at the end of a process triggered in March by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

This would mark a shift in Gibraltar’s stated policy of seeking extraordinary arrangements with the EU after Brexit.

Many companies have so far been attracted to Gibraltar by the prospect of being able to operate in all 28 EU countries from a territory with low tax rates and business-friendly regulations.

The loss of the access to the EU market, granted to EU member states by so-called passporting rules, may reduce firms’ appetite to establish their headquarters in the British enclave.

But this may not discourage Gibraltar-based firms that operate in the United Kingdom.

“Our financial model will not have to change,” Tipping told lawmakers, noting Britain has committed to guarantee full access to its market for Gibraltar companies.

He said about 20 percent of motor vehicles in Britain are underwritten by Gibraltar-based insurance companies, making insurers the largest financial sector in Gibraltar, which is also home to more than a dozen banks, several investment funds and top online gambling firms.

Gibraltar, often dubbed “the Rock” because of its famous cliff-faced mountain, voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU at last year’s Brexit referendum.

It remains, however, committed to remain part of Britain after Brexit. The enclave rejected the idea of Britain sharing sovereignty with Spain by 99 percent to 1 percent in a 2002 referendum.

The future of Gibraltar is one of the many thorny issues that will have to be sorted in the two-year divorce talks between Britain and the EU which will end in March 2019.

The EU offered Spain a veto right over the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc.
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Italy will open new detention centers across the country in the next few months as part of its push to speed up deportations of illegal migrants, despite critics saying that the centers are not only inhumane but also do not produce the desired result.

Violent protests and difficulty identifying migrants has led to the closure of similar centers over the past few years, but on Tuesday the Interior Ministry asked regional governments to provide a total of 1,600 beds in such centers.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti says migrants must be detained to stop them from slipping away before they can be sent home.

The plans include reopening one for men at Ponte Galeria on the outskirts of Rome where migrants had sewed their mouths shut in protest before it was destroyed by interned migrants in 2015.

Over the weekend, Reuters journalists visited the still-open female section of the Ponte Galeria center, and spoke to three Nigerian women. All have applied for asylum from behind bars.

Of the 63 women now being held in the center, more than two thirds are awaiting asylum request responses. Twenty-seven are Nigerian, many of them victims of sex trafficking.

Isoke Edionwer, 28, said she was a prostitute for five years, but two years ago paid off her debt and lived in Naples until she was brought to the center a few weeks ago.

“I’m a changed person. I’m no longer a prostitute,” she said. She wants to go back to Naples and earn a living from selling soaps and other items from a shop she opened.

Mass migrant arrivals by sea are putting Italy under increasing pressure. Numbers are up almost 40 percent this year after a record 181,000 came in 2016, and more than 175,000 are being housed in shelters for asylum seekers.

Senator Luigi Manconi of the ruling Democratic Party said the new-style detention centers had been phased out previously because officials working there had failed to determine the real identity and nationality of most migrants for deportation.

“If they didn’t work before, the solution isn’t to create a bunch of new ones,” he told Reuters outside the Ponte Galeria center’s gate, which is guarded by soldiers and police.

In particular, victims of sex trafficking should be helped, not locked up, Manconi said: “Why aren’t they being protected? Are they a threat to the state? No!”

Between 45-50 percent of those held in the new centers were likely to be deported, officials said. Others either cannot be identified or are not accepted by their countries of origin and must be released.

Some 4,000 were deported in 2015, but there are no official numbers yet for 2016.

Happy Idahosa, 20, was picked up by police in the city of Perugia on New Year’s Eve and sent to Ponte Galeria.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I came to Italy because there is peace and freedom here, and I want to stay.”

 
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Emmanuel Macron, 39, will join the ranks of the world’s youngest leaders when he is inaugurated as president of France on Sunday.

Some leaders past and president who made big marks were even younger when they assumed power.

Fidel Castro

The Cuban revolutionary leader, who died last year, was 32 when his rebel forces took control of Cuba. He ruled for nearly five decades as one of the world’s last communist leaders.

John F. Kennedy

Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected to the presidency of the United States. The wealthy senator and war hero was 43 when he took the oath of office in 1961. But he was not the youngest U.S. president ever — that was Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 when he took over after the assassination of President William McKinley.

Tony Blair and David Cameron

Blair was 43 when he was elected Britain’s prime minister in 1997 — the country’s youngest leader since 42-year-old Lord Liverpool in 1812.

Cameron was also 43, but a few months younger than Blair, when he became Britain’s leader in 2010.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Ataturk, the revered founder of the Republic of Turkey, was 42 when he became the country’s first president in 1923. The revolutionary leader’s last name means “Father of the Turks.”

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson

In Iceland, Gunnlaugsson became prime minister at 38 in 2013. He resigned in 2016 after details of his offshore financial holdings were revealed in the Panama Papers leak.

Moammar Gadhafi

The late Libyan leader was 27 when he seized power in 1969. The dictator held on to power until he was ousted in 2011. He was captured and killed a few months later.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Nasser was 38 when he became president of Egypt in 1956. He nationalized the Suez Canal and championed the pan-Arab cause, becoming one of the world’s most prominent anti-imperialist figures by the time of his death in 1970.

Kim Jong Un

The North Korean ruler’s age remains something of a mystery, but he is thought to be 32 or 33. Kim, the third generation in North Korea’s ruling dynasty, assumed power in December 2011 upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

Rajiv Gandhi

Gandhi was catapulted to India’s highest office when his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in 1984. He began his premiership with promises of modernizing India’s creaking government. Within a few years, he was forced to resign amid allegations of taking bribes in an arms deal. He was assassinated in 1991 while campaigning to return to office.

Justin Trudeau

Trudeau was elected as Canada’s prime minister in 2015, when he was 43. Like Rajiv Gandhi, he had a strong family connection to the office — his father, Pierre Trudeau, also served as prime minister.
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The prospect of an economic doomsday for Greece may have diminished in the past week, but citizen Angelika Dinkel doesn’t much care.

Following months of negotiations, the Greek government last week agreed to further austerity measures in order to access loans from its $94 billion bailout program..

But as she waits in central Athens for a church to open and a hoped-for handout of maybe $5 — or even $10 if she’s lucky —  the 60-year-old’s mind is focused on day-to-day survival.

There may be talk of a light at the end of the tunnel for a country traumatized by seven years of economic turmoil, but on the streets of Athens they seem a world away from everyday reality.

“There’s no reason to pay attention. Things are just getting worse,” says Dinkel, who struggles to scrape together the $50 a month she needs to stay off the streets.  

“No one thought it could be this bad.”

A disconnect

The race is now on for Greek officials rushing to create a bumper package of new legislation agreed to during the negotiations.

These include a cut in taxes, the opening up of energy markets and a further slashing of pensions.

Pending approval from the Greek parliament in the coming days, it is expected the agreement will be ready for the next meeting of eurozone finance ministers on May 22.

There, hopes are that $8 billion in rescue loans will be approved, allowing the country to make a crucial debt repayment in July.

The markets have been largely cheered by the news, while there have been other positive signs too — last month, the country posted its first overall budget surplus in more than two decades.

Yet little of this is being felt on the ground, where poverty and homelessness remain all too prevalent.  

“I don’t think [the latest agreement] will improve the daily lives of people,” claims Aliki Mouriki, a sociologist and senior research fellow at the National Center for Social Research in Athens. “People are seeing further cuts in things like their pensions, so why would they be happy? Some segments of the Greek population and businesses may be happy over [the reforms] as the economic climate has less uncertainty, but this is not reflecting on daily lives.”

Sense of betrayal

The Greek leftist ruling party Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras may have emerged with a deal, but the moves have already sparked new protests.

Meanwhile, many consider these latest steps just another act of weakness or betrayal by a party that swept into power on an anti-austerity ticket in 2015.

Though emergency funds from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) helped pull Greece back from the brink of collapse in 2010, this is the third such bailout, and many Greeks are of the opinion that the country’s supposed medicine of reforms and austerity is actually proving to be its poison.

Chrysa Lazaridou, who runs a bakery not far from the city’s towering ancient Acropolis, has been keeping an eye on recent developments.

Despite the inclusion of “counter measures” against the austerity — including rent subsidies for low income families — she feels the agreed package represents more of the same when it comes to Greece’s current place in the world.

“I thought [Alexis] Tsipras would be different, but in practice he’s not,” she said.

“All the decisions made here are made outside of Greece in the European Union, while politicians and businessmen will be the ones to profit.”

Vanishing savings

Meanwhile, other signs of progress remain tentative.

Amid the bailouts, reforms and austerity, the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of nearly 28 percent.

However, in recent months it has climbed once again to 23.5 percent — still the highest in Europe — while Friday the European Commission is set to revise its prediction of growth in Greece over 2017 from 2.7 percent to 2 percent.

Panagiotis Lappas, approached by VOA in central Athens, is a banking lawyer who often deals with families overcome by debt — something he sees with increasing regularity.

“Their savings have vanished after seven years,” he explained.

He was circumspect about the latest agreement, stating it was neither “pleasant nor necessary, but maybe now we have no other choice.”

However, in Lappas’ view, the time for austerity is over. More needed to be done, he thought, to stimulate growth and attract investment by lowering business rates.

He also called for debt relief, an issue still at the heart of the debate among creditors regarding Greece, and a pre-condition demanded by the IMF for its participation in this bailout.  

Eyes abroad

Tsipras has talked up the deal as “balanced and sustainable,” but he may find the Greek public even harder to convince than his own party, or those holding the purse strings.

Syriza is badly lagging behind its competitors in the polls, though the true test will come in the country’s elections in 2019.

Meanwhile, for one teenager not yet old enough to vote, the answer may not lie with Tsipras, or any of his political rivals.

Clutching his skateboard in Athens’ Monastiraki neighborhood, 17-year-old Alberto Frangou feels little allegiance to the idea of the EU and is scornful of Greek politicians.  

“I hate them, they’ve not helped us,” he said, telling VOA that he feared entering a job market where youth unemployment was measured at 48 percent in January.

Instead, he is considering another option, one that potentially spells more trouble for Greece in the coming years.

Between 2008 and 2016, around 450,000 mostly young and educated people left the country in search of a better future.

“If things don’t get any better, then I will just have to go elsewhere,” he told VOA.
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Czech President Milos Zeman on Monday demanded his prime minister terminate the agreement that formed the coalition government if he is to agree to firing the finance minister, deepening a rift between the country’s two leaders.

The European Union member is in political crisis over the future of Finance Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire businessman who faces questions over past business practices and is the main political rival of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka.

With an election due in October, Sobotka is demanding the president dismiss Babis, but the finance minister, who heads the anti-establishment ANO party, has found an ally in Zeman who has long had poor relations with the prime minister.

Sobotka, who heads the center-left Social Democrats, asked Zeman on Friday to dismiss Babis by May 9, but the president has refused to do so.

“The president stated that the prime minister cannot task the president with setting a date for dismissal,” the presidency said in a statement issued after Zeman met Babis on Monday.

Under the constitution, the president dismisses a minister if requested by the prime minister. Lawyers say the head of state should act promptly and has little wiggle room.

However, on Monday Zeman said Sobotka’s and Babis’s parties were bound by coalition agreement — reached in 2014 to form the cabinet — and that the prime minister must pull out of the deal before requesting Babis’ dismissal against the minister’s will.

“A termination of the coalition agreement would be needed for a valid dismissal,” the statement said.

Such a move could trigger the coalition government’s collapse. Last Friday the prime minister took back a pledge to resign along with his whole government in order to dislodge Babis.

Zeman also wanted to see a nomination for a replacement, the statement added.

Sobotka later urged the Zeman to respect the constitution.

“I would like to call on Mr. President to respect the fundamental law of our country. The coalition agreement has nothing to do with that,” the prime minister said in a statement.

Sobotka has said Babis failed to clear suspicions he dodged taxes by buying tax-free bonds from his conglomerate Agrofert.

Babis says he has not violated any laws.

The EU’s fraud office and Czech police have also been investigating whether Babis manipulated ownership of a conference center to unfairly qualify for EU subsidies meant for small businesses.

Babis has said the prime minister’s actions are politically motivated ahead of parliamentary elections in October. Babis’ ANO party enjoys a more-than 10 point lead over the Social Democrats, according to opinion polls.
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World leaders and other political heavyweights have sent congratulatory messages to France’s president-elect, Emmanuel Macron on his victory over Marine Le Pen.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted “Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on his big win today as the next President of France. I look very much forward to working with him!”

Trump had not publicly endorsed either candidate ahead of the election, but let it be known he generally favored Marine Le Pen’s views.

Former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and New York mayor Bill de Blasio, among others, congratulated Macron and the people of France for the presidential election result.

“Your victory is a victory for a strong and united Europe and for French-German friendship,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said in statement.

Macron spoke with Merkel after his victory was announced, telling her that he would travel to Berlin “very quickly.”

A British spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement that May “warmly congratulates President-elect Macron on his election success. France is one of our closest allies and we look forward to working with the new President on a wide range of shared priorities.”

May also discussed Brexit with Macron, saying “the UK wants a strong partnership with a secure and prosperous EU once we leave,” the spokesman added.

European Union leaders also offered congratulations to Macron: “Happy that the French chose a European future,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wrote on Twitter.

EU Council President Donald Tusk said the French had chosen “liberty, equality and fraternity” and “said no to the tyranny of fake news”.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said “the victory of President-elect Macron is a symbolic victory against inward-looking and protectionist moves and shows a vote of confidence in the EU.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his message to Macron that China is willing to push partnership with France to a higher level. Xi said their countries share a “responsibility toward peace and development in the world.”

Xi recalled that France was the first Western power to establish diplomatic relations with communist-ruled China in 1964.

Other world leaders from Canada to Latin America to Australia also congratulated Macron on his historic victory.

Macron, the youngest French leader since the Emperor Napoleon, will take office on May 14, 2017.
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Voters in France have elected pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron as the country’s new president, rejecting the anti-EU, anti-immigrant policies of nationalist Marine Le Pen. Preliminary results released immediately after polls closed Sunday showed Macron won 65 percent support compared to 34.5 percent for Le Pen. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Paris.
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Germany’s president said Sunday that despite recent disagreement the foundation of his country’s relations with Israel remains solid – a reference to a recent diplomatic spat over an Israeli anti-occupation group.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is in Israel on his first foreign trip outside Europe since he was elected president earlier this year. It comes two weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled talks with the German foreign minister because the visitor chose to meet Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers-turned-whistleblowers who oppose Israel’s rule over the Palestinians.

The dispute has cast a shadow over what would otherwise have been a routine visit to Israel by the German president.

Netanyahu said after meeting with Steinmeier that Israel has a “unique partnership” with Germany. In an apparent dig at Breaking the Silence, Netanyahu said Israeli troops have “moral standards second to none.”

The group says soldiers come forward with their war stories to shine a light on problems either unknown or ignored by the public. But many Israeli leaders have portrayed them as traitors, in part because their reports and lectures are often aimed at foreign audiences.

Steinmeier addressed the dispute at a speech in German at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

He said diverse voices are “the oxygen of democracy” and said he believes “those who raise their voice, who criticize, but also respect the voices of others – they are not traitors of the people, but guardians of the people.”

Complex ties

Israel and Germany have had a long, close and complicated relationship. Israel was established in 1948 on the ashes of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The countries only established diplomatic relations in 1965.

Today, Germany is a key Israeli trade partner and ally in Europe, and assumes responsibility for the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

But tensions occasionally flare up over Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Germany, along with most of the international community, considers Israeli settlements in territory claimed by the Palestinians illegal. Israel says settlements should be resolved along with other core issues in peace talks.

Steinmeier said some advised he cancel or postpone his visit over the spat but he decided otherwise “not because I agreed with your prime minister’s cancellation of the meeting with the German foreign minister, but because I believe that I would be amiss if I allowed the relationship between the two nations to get deeper into a dead end, which would harm both sides,” he said.

“The relationship between Germany and Israel will always remain unique. We must not forget then when it is difficult and the wind is a bit stormy. Especially in such times, we are called upon to protect this precious heritage,” said Steinmeier.
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