Month: January 2019

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced on Monday plans to increase the standard minimum monthly wage by about 11 percent, the first such hike since the country’s debt crisis erupted almost a decade ago.

The country emerged in August from its third international bailout since 2010 and the government, which faces a national election this year, has promised to reverse some of the unpopular reforms Greece implemented under bailout supervision.

“I’m calling on you, after a decade of wage cuts, to make another historic step,” Tsipras said, calling on his cabinet to approve the labor ministry’s proposal for an increase to 650 euros from 586 euros currently.

Tsipras, who was elected in 2015 pledging to end austerity but later signed up to Greece’s third bailout, also proposed the abolition of a youth minimum wage for those below 25.

Ministers applauded and a smiling Tsipras responded: “From your reaction I reckon that my proposal is … approved”.

The plan must be approved by parliament in the coming days to take effect next month, as the government hopes.

Athens had told its European lenders that it would reinstate the process of increasing the minimum wage periodically after the end of the bailout.

Greece slashed the standard minimum monthly wage by 22 percent to 586 euros in 2012, when it was mired in recession.

Workers below 25 years suffered deeper wage cut as part of measures prescribed by international lenders to make the labor market more flexible and the economy more competitive.

Greece expects 2.5 percent economic growth this year. “The minimum wage increase marks the beginning of a new era for Greek workers who carried the weight of the crisis on their shoulders,” Labor Minister Effie Acthsioglou told Reuters.

“This decision proves in practice what it means to have a leftist government at the country’s wheel.”

The government’s current term ends in October and Tsipras’ Syriza party is trailing the conservative New Democracy party by up to 12 points in opinion polls.

Labor unions said on Monday the suggested increase was far from offsetting the loss that workers suffered during the crisis. Employers also said that it should be combined with tax cuts and a reduction in social security contributions.

The International Monetary Fund urged Athens last week to introduce greater flexibility into the labour market to mitigate an expected negative impact from its new policies.
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British officials are war-gaming various strategies for coping with the disruption of Britain leaving the European Union without an exit deal, including declaring a state of emergency and martial law to avert disorder provoked by possible food shortages and energy outages.

Details emerged of Operation Yellow Hammer, the contingency planning underway for a so-called no-deal Brexit, ahead of important parliamentary votes this week that could result in Britain postponing its departure by nine months or even more.

Operation Yellow Hammer has provoked the wrath of hardline Brexiters, who say the war-gaming is excessive and the leaking of what the government is considering is just designed to scare rebel lawmakers into accepting the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement the House of Commons rejected earlier this month.

As the exit day of March 29 looms, the government and businesses are scrambling to prepare for possible chaos wrought by a no-deal exit, which some fear could severely disrupt supply chains, energy networks and basic cross-border services, from banking to travel. Downing Street admits a no-deal exit would bring disruption “but as a responsible government we are taking the appropriate steps to minimize this disruption and ensure the country is prepared.”

Some civil servants have compared the likely disruption to the impact of a war. Defense officials told Sky News Sunday the army is stockpiling food, fuel, spare parts and ammunition in readiness. “An army marches on its stomach. If supply lines break down, they struggle,” an official said.

Earlier this month, nearly 100 trucks took part in a drill to test Britain’s contingency plans for coping with likely customs and security delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The port of Dover normally sees 10,000 trucks pass through every day, bringing vital supplies from the continent and sending Britain’s exports to the European Union and beyond. The fear is a large part of southeast England could see unmanageable traffic lines.

Hardline Brexiters, like former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, have dismissed the no-deal Brexit warnings as hysteria. “These doom-laden predictions are so hyperbolical as to suffer from the law of diminishing returns. Brexiteers have, for months, been arguing that a no-deal exit is manageable and government warnings are overblown,” Johnson said recently.

The House of Commons is set to vote Tuesday on whether Britain should delay the March 29 exit if a withdrawal deal that will garner sufficient support from lawmakers cannot be reached with Brussels.

More than a dozen ministers are warning they’ll resign if May fails to commit to avoiding a no-deal Brexit, although they’re prepared to give her two weeks to try to conclude a new withdrawal deal first.

In the event she can’t, parliament would have to pass new legislation to delay an exit. But delaying Britain’s departure would also require unanimous agreement from the 27 other EU member states, and Brussels has warned the exit could only be postponed for a handful of months.

Ironically, rebellious hardline Euro-skeptics in May’s ruling Conservative party, who were key in the heavy defeat of May’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement earlier this month, appear to be softening their opposition to her deal; while pro-EU Conservative rebels and middle-of the-roaders appear to be moving closer together in an alliance determined now to bury it for good.

May’s proposed deal would see Britain locked in a customs union with the European Union for several years while it negotiates a vaguely defined free trade settlement.

In the temporary customs union, Britain would be unable to influence EU laws, regulations and product standards it would have to observe. The transition was reached to avoid customs checks on the border separating Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, but British lawmakers fear Britain could be trapped indefinitely in the transition.

Leading Brexiters say if May can get a sunset clause written into the agreement to allow Britain to escape the transition agreement later on, if it wished, or if the transition was time-limited, they might reverse their opposition and back the deal.

The possible change of heart is being determined by their fear that pro-EU lawmakers are gaining in parliamentary strength. But it isn’t clear Brussels or the other 27 member states will agree such a clause, they insist there can’t be substantial changes to the deal they agreed on after two years of haggling.

Pro-EU lawmakers across all parties appear emboldened and determined to negotiate a much softer agreement that would see Britain stay in a customs union with the bloc permanently.

 
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The U.S. Treasury has lifted sanctions on three Russian companies connected to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, reversing a move which wreaked havoc on global aluminum markets last year.

To the Treasury and supporters of the move, it was an example of sanctions working as they should by changing a target’s behavior in nine months under suffocating restrictions on trade. Due to the sanctions, Deripaska, a tycoon who has been close to the Kremlin, agreed to reduce his shareholdings to below 50 percent.

Congressional Democrats and some Republicans, however, worry that Deripaska could retain significant influence, even as he himself stays under sanctions.

Here is a look at Deripaska, his companies, and possible consequences of the Treasury ruling.

Putin ally

With his cropped hair and scruffy beard, Deripaska was a familiar face to Russians long before he was dragged into in the U.S. furor over the 2016 election.

Amid the economic chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse, the trained physicist became a major player on the Russian metals market even before his 30th birthday. Even among Russian billionaire businessman, Deripaska’s also notable for his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”

As special counsel Robert Mueller investigates alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign and Russian interests, Deripaska’s links to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have come under scrutiny. Manafort, who was convicted last year in the United States of tax and bank fraud, was a former business partner of Deripaska.

The Belarusian model and self-described sex coach Anastasia Vashukevich — known by her pseudonym Nastya Rybka — said last year that she had obtained details of Deripaska’s alleged role in U.S. election meddling while spending time on his yacht. Vashukevich was arrested in Thailand last February and deported this month. She is now in Russia.

Vashukevich earlier indicated she would turn over the recordings she claimed to have if the U.S. could help secure her release, but she later withdrew the offer, suggesting that she and Deripaska had reached an agreement. Deripaska won a Russian defamation suit against Vashukevich and another man last year.

Sanctions collateral damage

The U.S. decision in April 2018 to sanction Rusal — the massive aluminum producer then controlled by Deripaska — had a big impact. Shares in the company plunged over 50 percent, and supply chains around the world were disrupted.

That exposed both the power and the limits of U.S. policy toward Russia, says Tom Adshead of Moscow-based consultancy Macro-Advisory.

Previous sanctions had been written to minimize damage to other sectors of the economy, and in particular Western businesses buying Russian commodities. That changed with Deripaska.

By barring almost any commercial relationship with one of the world’s largest producers of a metal key to international supply chains, U.S. policymakers ensured this time the economic pain would be felt not only in Russia.

“There was collateral damage that wasn’t desirable,” Adshead said. Besides an immediate jump in aluminum prices, that included economic uncertainty for Rusal’s employees outside Russia in countries like Sweden and Ireland.

The Rusal experience could mean the U.S. is more cautious about sanctioning major market players in future, Adshead predicted.

After the sanctions were removed from Rusal on Monday, shares in the company rose to their highest since April, though they remained at only around two-thirds of their value prior to the sanctions.

The price of aluminum largely held steady as other companies have stepped into the void left by Rusal and increased supply, analysts say.

The main winners have been state-owned metal producers in China — just the ones the Trump administration has sought to stymie by imposing tariffs on Chinese aluminum.

Enforcing conditions

The key condition of lifting sanctions on Rusal and Deripaska’s other companies is that the companies “reduced Oleg Deripaska’s direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control,” the Treasury said.

Whether that will actually prove to be the case was a key bone of contention in Congress, which voted this month to try to block the administration’s efforts to remove the sanctions. In the House, 136 Republicans joined Democrats to disapprove the deal while in the Senate 11 Republicans supported the move but fell short of the 60 votes needed.

Deripaska remains a significant minority shareholder — his En+ group says he holds “no more than 44.95 percent” — and other shares are held by smaller shareholders and independent trustees under an agreement with the Treasury.

There’s no other shareholder of the same size and a number of the other shareholders would probably agree with him on many strategic issues,” Adshead said. “Therefore it will almost certainly be run in the way he wants it to be run, but the point is that he no longer has as much freedom or control as he wanted.”

 
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Turkey’s foreign minister met Monday with the U.N. judicial expert investigating the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as Ankara calls for an international inquiry.

U.N. special investigator Agnes Callamard will be in Turkey until Saturday for a series of meetings with authorities, including Istanbul’s chief prosecutor.

Saudi officials have not confirmed whether they have responded to Callamard’s request to meet the Saudi Ambassador in Turkey and to visit the kingdom as part of her investigation.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu posted a tweet following the meeting.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Turkey on October 2nd.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the killing was a direct order from Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman — a notion that Riyadh has denied. Khashoggi’s dismembered body remains unaccounted for.

Initially Saudi Arabia said he safely left the site on his own, but later admitted he was killed there in what Saudi officials called a rogue operation.

Turkey said the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government, but Saudi officials maintain it was not ordered by the Saudi crown prince.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday lifted sanctions on aluminum giant Rusal and other Russian firms linked to oligarch Oleg Deripaska, despite a Democratic-led push in the U.S. Congress to maintain the restrictions.

Earlier this month, 11 of Trump’s fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate joined Democrats in a failed effort to keep the sanctions on Rusal, its parent, En+ Group Plc, and power firm JSC EuroSibEnergo. But that was not enough to overcome opposition from Trump and most of his fellow Republicans.

Advocates for keeping the sanctions had argued that Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, retained too much control over the companies to lift sanctions imposed in April to punish Russia for actions including its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and support for Syria’s government in its civil war.

Some lawmakers from both parties also said it was inappropriate to ease the sanctions while Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigates whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Moscow.

But in its statement on Sunday, the U.S. Treasury Department said the three companies had reduced Deripaska’s direct and indirect shareholding stake and severed his control.

That action, it said, ensured that most directors on the En+ and Rusal boards would be independent directors, including Americans and Europeans, who had no business, professional or family ties to Deripaska or any other person designated for sanctions by the Treasury Department.

“The companies have also agreed to unprecedented transparency for Treasury into their operations by undertaking extensive, ongoing auditing, certification, and reporting requirements,” the department’s statement said.

Deripaska himself remains subject to U.S. sanctions.

Trump administration officials, and many Republicans who opposed the effort to keep the sanctions in place, said they worried about the impact on the global aluminum industry. They also said Deripaska’s decision to lower his stakes in the companies so that he no longer controlled them showed that the sanctions had worked.

Rusal is the world’s largest aluminum producer outside China. The sanctions on the company spurred demand for Chinese metal. China’s aluminum exports jumped to a record high in 2018.

Trump denies collusion, and Moscow has denied seeking to influence the U.S. election on Trump’s behalf, despite U.S. intelligence agencies’ finding that it did so.

Deripaska had ties with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Manafort pleaded guilty in September 2018 to attempted witness tampering and conspiring against the United States.

 
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At least 70,000 people braved cold and rain in Brussels to demand the Belgian government and the European Union increase their efforts to fight climate change Sunday, the Belgian capital’s fourth climate rally in two months to attract at least 10,000 participants.

The event was described as Belgium’s biggest climate march ever, with police estimating slightly bigger crowds than a similar demonstration last month. Trains from across the nation were so clogged thousands of people didn’t make the march in time.

Some 35,000 schoolchildren and students in Belgium skipped classes Thursday to take their demands for urgent action to prevent global warming to the streets.

“Young people have set a good example,” protester Henny Claassen said amid raised banners urging better renewable energy use and improved air quality. “This is for our children, for our grandchildren and to send a message to politicians.”

Even though the direct impact on Belgian politics was likely to be small since the country currently is led by a caretaker government, the demonstrations have pushed the issue of climate change up the agenda as parties prepare for national and European Union elections in May.

The march ended at the headquarters of the European Union. The 28-nation bloc has been at the vanguard of global efforts to counter climate change but still came in for the protesters’ criticism.

“Society as a whole could do a lot more because they’re saying `Yes, we’re doing a lot,’ but they’re doing not that much. They could do a lot more,” demonstrator Pieter Van Der Donckt said.

Citizen activism on climate change Sunday was not limited to Belgium.

In Paris, there was a debate inspired by a recent petition for legal action to force the government to set more ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions that create global warming.

President Emmanuel Macron sees himself as a climate crusader, but suffered a serious setback when fuel tax increases meant to wean France off fossil fuels backfired dramatically, unleashing the yellow vest protests now in their third month.

 
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As the world commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on International Holocaust Remembrance Day Sunday, death camp survivor Cipora Feivlovich marks her own personal milestone as she turns 92.

Feivlovich has spent her most recent birthdays recounting to audiences in Israel and Germany her harrowing experiences in the camp, where her parents, brother and best friends all perished.

Despite witnessing daily atrocities and fearing that the toxic food and injections she was given would make her infertile, she eventually married her husband Pinchas, a fellow orphaned survivor, and started a new family. Today she has dozens of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

“When we first met after the war he asked me if I thought I could have children after everything I went through in Auschwitz. And I said ‘I don’t promise anything. What the Lord gives is what will be,'” she recalled from her home in Jerusalem. “We understood each other. He always said he was lucky to marry me since I understood him.”

But for the following decades, as he obsessively wrote and lectured about his six-year Holocaust ordeal in multiple concentration camps and the trauma of losing eight siblings and his entire extended family, she kept quiet to try and raise their three children in Israel in relative normalcy. Only in the 1990s, long after the kids had moved out, did she finally start processing her own troubled history.

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, wiping out a third of world Jewry. Israel’s main Holocaust memorial day is in the spring — marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The United Nations designated Jan. 27 as the annual international commemoration, marking the date of Auschwitz’s liberation in 1945, the day Feivlovich turned 18.

She grew up in a Transylvanian village with a large Jewish population and lived a normal life until she was 14, when she and the other Jewish students were kicked out of school.

She said her family holed up in their home for the following years, fearful of their anti-Semitic neighbors, and naively waited for the storm to pass. But then the Nazis arrived in 1944, took them away in the middle of the night and crammed all Jewish residents into the local synagogue.

“Two days we sat on the floor, you couldn’t leave for the restrooms so people relieved themselves where they are sitting,” she recalled. “On both sides of the street the non-Jews were standing and clapping their hands saying: ‘Bravo, we are getting rid of the Jews.'”‘

After a brief stay in a Hungarian ghetto, they were deported on the three-day train ride to Auschwitz, with each cattle wagon packed shoulder to shoulder.

“My grandfather died there while standing. We couldn’t even lay him down. And in that miserable state we got to our final destination,” she said. There, they were greeted with barking dogs, screams and a warning: “Young mothers, hand your babies to grandmothers or aunts and maybe you will live.”

Feivlovich and her younger sister were thrown to one side, the boys to the other. They never saw their parents again.

The girls were ordered to strip. Their hair was cut and they were hosed with freezing water and marched outside naked, shivering with cold and shame.

“The Nazis are teasing us, spitting on us and watching us there miserable,” she said.

After finally getting dresses to wear, they were approached by a tall man in a polished uniform who introduced himself as Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor. He pointed to a huge chimney spewing thick black smoke and told them anyone not essential to the Third Reich would go straight to the crematorium.

“I’m holding my sister’s hand, and we are shaking and crying and I ask: ‘Is this possible?'”  she remembered.

Starved and exhausted, she and hundreds of other Jewish prisoners were presented with a large liquid-filled barrel.

“The moment we took that first sip in our mouth, everyone started screaming insanely. It was like a million pins in your throat. You couldn’t swallow the soup,” she remembered. “But we learned to drink that poisoned soup since there was nothing else to eat.”

She said they were told it was laced with toxin to help kill off the Jewish race and prevent it from reproducing. Feivlovich said she believed it since she stopped menstruating for a long time after.

Those already pregnant faced an even worse fate. In one case, a pregnant relative named Sarah was not allowed to go to the infirmary and forced to give birth on the floor. Usually, the Nazis took Jewish newborns away, never to be seen again. But in this case, they ordered the mother to drown her own baby in a pail of water.

By the time Auschwitz was liberated, she had already been transported to forced labor in a German armament factory. Even there she wasn’t safe. The camp commander ordered her to receive a mysterious injection for talking back and refusing to make the Christian sign of the cross on herself.

She awoke after two days. By then, the war was winding down. The Nazis disappeared and soon an American tank broke through. Yiddish-speaking soldiers comforted the emaciated inmates.

Some 150,000 elderly survivors remain in Israel today, with a similar number worldwide.

Feivlovich said in recent years her birthday has become “obligating,” particularly since her husband passed away in 2007.

“My husband demanded of me: Don’t stop talking about the Holocaust, because if we don’t speak about it there will be enough Holocaust deniers after us,” she said. “It is true that 74 years have passed but we are still living and we are here.”

 
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The World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, that wrapped up Friday, had some notable absentees, including U.S. President Donald Trump.

With a backlash against a perceived ruling elite gaining ground in many countries, analysts say some leaders steered clear of a gathering often seen as an inaccessible club for the world’s super-rich. Others argue it is vital they get together to discuss urgent issues like climate change and world trade.

On the surface, though, it was business as usual: On a sealed off, snowbound mountaintop, world leaders rubbed shoulders with global executives, lobbyists and pressure groups. It remains a vital gathering of global decision-makers, said Leslie Vinjamuri, head of the U.S. and the Americas Program at policy group Chatham House.

“They’re there to do business, they’re there to engage in an exchange of ideas. And so I think it’s still tremendously important.”

President Trump stayed away because of the partial U.S. government shutdown, which ended Friday. China’s President Xi Jinping wasn’t there, neither was Britain’s Theresa May, nor France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

“They’re tremendously preoccupied with the troubles they face at home, which isn’t a good sign for globalism. The criticism and the critique that surrounds Davos is extraordinary. People say, ‘You know, it’s where all those people go to have dinner with each other, it has nothing to do with the rest of us.’ And, of course, it’s about a lot more than that, but the optics are tremendously negative at this point in time,” Vinjamuri said.

Behind the heavily guarded security perimeter, delegates were well aware of a growing global backlash beyond.

David Gergen of the Harvard Kennedy School echoed the concerns of many at Davos during a debate at the summit.

“It’s worth remembering we’ve just had the longest bull run in our stock market in history. We’ve had good economic times. Incomes have gone up in a number of countries and yet the discontent is deep and it’s threatening our democracies. And there’s something that’s not working here that we need to figure out,” Gergen told an audience Wednesday.

The absence of many big players means others have stolen the limelight. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has been widely praised for making peace with Eritrea. Speaking at the forum, he said African countries must deepen their ties.

“We believe integration must be viewed not just as an economic project but also as crucial to securing peace and reconciliation in the Horn of Africa,” Ali said.

Other issues also rose up the Davos agenda, notably climate change. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged action.

“This is about being on the right side of history. Do you want to be a leader that you look back in time and say that you were on the wrong side of the argument when the world was crying out for a solution? And it’s as simple as that I think,” Ardern said.

The Davos 2019 will likely be remembered, however, for the lack of global leadership, according to Vinjamuri of Chatham House.

“That space has been vacated and nobody necessarily even wants to take things forward at the level of providing a vision,” Vinjamuri said.

The lack of such a vision at a time of profound global change sent a chill far beyond the confines of this winter resort.
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A majority of Germans favor setting maximum speed limits for Germany’s famously fast Autobahns to help battle climate change, according to a poll published Saturday.

Fifty-two percent of those polled wanted vehicle speeds limited to between 120 kph and 140 kph (75 mph and 87 mph), the poll conducted by the Emnid institute and published by Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed. Forty-six percent opposed such limits.

A government-appointed committee studying the future of transport is looking at ending the “no limits” sections on motorways as part of a broader proposal to help Germany meet European Union emissions targets.

Transport minister disagrees

Not everyone is on board with the plans.

Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, a conservative from Bavaria, the home state of carmakers Daimler and Audi, a unit of Volkswagen, said he opposed setting speed limits on Germany’s decades-old motorway network.

“The principle of freedom has proven itself. Whoever wants to drive 120 can drive 120, and those who want to go faster can do that too. Why this constant micromanagement?” he told the newspaper.

Scheuer said German highways were the safest in the world, and that imposing a speed limit would cut the country’s overall carbon emissions by less than 0.5 percent.

He said 7,640 km (4,747 miles) of German highways, about 30 percent of the total, have speed limits, and that he plans to meet with the committee to discuss its proposals, which are to be finalized by the end of March.

“The goal is to think about the work they’re doing and to generate results, instead of revisiting old, rejected and unrealistic demands like speed limits,” he said.

EU fines possible

Germany could be hit with heavy EU fines if it fails to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and poisonous nitrogen oxides. Transport emissions, which have not fallen since 1990, are a particular target for reductions.

The government is torn between the need to protect Germany’s crucial car industry, buffeted by a series of costly emissions cheating scandals in recent years, and the need to cut greenhouse gases to meet EU and domestic climate goals.

Imposing a motorway speed limit of 130 kph, fuel tax hikes, and quotas for electric and hybrid car sales, along with ending tax breaks for diesel cars, could generate half the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed, the committee said in a paper reported by Reuters this month.

The committee’s findings are to be incorporated into a climate change law the government wants to enact this year. 
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A European Parliament delegation on Saturday urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to release political prisoners, permit the return of banned human rights groups and restart dialogue with the opposition to end a 

months-long political crisis. 

The delegation led by European Member of Parliament (MEP) Ramon Jauregui, a Socialist from Spain, told a news conference it would ask the European Parliament to issue a new resolution on the crisis. 

For months, Nicaragua has been convulsed by some of its worst political tension since a civil war in the 1980s. An initial standoff between protesters and the government in April over planned welfare cuts quickly descended into deadly clashes. 

By the time the Ortega administration had clamped down on the protesters, more than 300 people had been killed and over 500 incarcerated, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, a group the government has blacklisted. 

Ortega sees coup attempt

Rights groups say four radio stations and one TV station have closed, and dozens of journalists have been beaten. The Ortega government says there is freedom of expression and has accused the opposition of seeking to mount a coup to oust him. 

“We don’t believe the government’s story of a coup d’etat,” Javier Nart, a Spanish Liberal MEP who as a journalist covered the Nicaraguan revolution that led to the 1979 ouster of dictator Anastasio Somoza by Ortega’s Sandinistas, said at the news conference.

“The repression of protests was excessive. The population is demanding more freedom and democracy. Nicaragua is going through a major crisis of democracy and the rule of law,” he added. 

The Nicaraguan government did not respond to a request from Reuters on the allegations made by the delegation. 

The European Parliament members said the Ortega government allowed them to hold meetings with all sectors of society, including political prisoners. But they noted that several opposition leaders suffered persecution after they had taken part in the meetings. 
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French President Emmanuel Macron leaves a France roiled by ongoing yellow vest protests for another tumultuous region — the Middle East — and talks with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on regional politics and weapons sales, shadowed by the looming U.S. troop pullout from Syria.

Macron’s three-day Egypt visit, his first official trip there since taking office in 2017, underscores that country’s role as vital ally in the fight against terror and hub of stability in a restive region.

Crucially, too, Cairo is a big-spending client for French weapons manufacturers, buying warships and fighter planes, with more potential sales in the pipeline.

​Human rights pressure

But the French president is facing heavy pressure to speak out against allegations of widespread human rights violations in Egypt, including those reportedly using equipment purchased from France. Adding to the pressure is a letter written to Macron by the family of a French teacher killed in police custody in 2013, calling for the “truth” behind his death.

“I imagine that President Macron is going to attempt to walk a fine line,” between raising rights concerns and prioritizing regional stability and security, said Dana Stroul, senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Macron’s first task on his arrival Sunday is less controversial: visiting the temples of Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt with his wife, Brigitte. Talks later with Sisi are expected to range from reinforcing economic cooperation, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to Libya and Syria.

​Place on world stage

Since taking office in 2017, the 41-year-old Macron has pushed for greater French clout on the world stage. He has hosted summits on climate change, peace, the Sahel and Libya. He criticized the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of Syria, saying “an ally must be dependable,” and that France would remain militarily involved in the region.

But Paris is no substitute for Washington, experts note, and French troops are already stretched in the Sahel. Still, Stroul believes France can partially help fill the U.S. withdrawal gap in other ways.

“What the French and the Europeans can do is play a much more robust diplomatic role in insisting the U.N. process be used for a political transition in Syria, and more robustly using sanctions and the potential to contribute to reconstruction as a leverage,” Stroul said.

Those measures, she added, will help ensure “the U.S. withdrawal does not just leave a vacuum for Russia, Iran and other adversaries to fill.”

​Weapons deals

Potential weapons deals are also expected to headline Macron’s Egypt talks. One of the world’s top arms exporters, France has supplied Egypt with warships and cruise missiles over the years, and Cairo was the first client to buy French Rafale fighter jets, says Paris-based defense expert Pierre Tran.

“Egypt is a very important arms client for France,” Tran said. “It effectively bailed out France by buying two Mistral helicopter ships that France had to buy back from Russia” because of a canceled deal.

France’s La Tribune newspaper speculated Egypt would agree to buy dozen more Rafale fighter jets during Macron’s visit, but the French presidential palace has reportedly said there will be no announcements during this visit. Discussions over the Egyptian purchase of two more French corvette warships, on top of four already bought, are also at “an advanced stage,” France’s Le Monde newspaper reported.

Activists detained, tortured

More certain is pressure at home for the president to speak out about rights abuses, including those tangling French weapons sales. Human rights advocates blame Egypt for detaining and torturing scores of activists over the years since the 2013 coup, among other repressive measures.

An October report by rights group Amnesty International claims French military and security equipment was used by Egyptian security forces in “brutal repression.”

And a recent report by nongovernmental group Front Line Defenders described worker abuse at an Alexandria shipyard building corvettes in partnership with the French company Naval Group, a practice that reportedly flouts France’s laws requiring French firms to establish mechanisms to prevent right abuses.

“France has been nurturing the dictatorship by equipping it with weapons and surveillance equipment, which has allowed the regime to go after the population and human rights activists,” said Antoine Madelin, international advocacy director at the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights, or FIDH.

During talks with Sissi in Paris in 2017, Macon gave the Egyptian president a list of Egyptian prisoners of whom he demanded the release, and the government says rights remain a priority for the French president.

“We engage in open and regular dialogue with Egypt on the issue of human rights,” a French foreign ministry spokeswoman told reporters ahead of Macron’s trip, saying such talks would continue including on individual rights cases.

But rights groups say Macron’s government has not done enough.

“The French government is facing a moral failure for not putting human rights in front of its economic interests,” Madelin of FIDH said.

Adding to the pressure is a recent letter to Macron by the family of slain French teacher Eric Lang, who had been living in Cairo for 20 years. In 2013, he was allegedly beaten to death while being detained in an Egyptian prison. Six Egyptians were jailed for his killing, but the family has blamed Egyptian police.

“We don’t understand why our country abandoned a French citizen and didn’t put all its political weight to shed light on his death,” wrote Lang’s sister and mother.

Still Egypt’s role as a key stabilizer and regional, if waning powerhouse, is key for France and other western countries. Both countries are concerned by the turmoil in Libya, migration, and other sources of regional instability, including terrorism.

On Libya, French efforts to increase its influence in the North African country’s politics has led to a power rivalry with Italy that some analysts believe undermines U.N. peace efforts. Both European countries hosted summits last year on Libya’s future. December 2018 elections in Libya, agreed to during the French summit, have been postponed amid ongoing fighting by rival militias, among other roadblocks.
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Five people were killed Friday when a helicopter and a small tourist airplane collided near the border between France and Italy.  

Italy’s mountain rescue service said rescue workers found two people injured at the crash site and evacuated them. 

Officials said the helicopter was carrying skiers to a glacier in the northwestern Italian region of Val d’Aosta when it collided with the tourist airplane about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) over the Rutor glacier.  

It was not immediately clear how the crash happened. The identities and nationalities of the victims had not yet been released.

Italy’s Val d’Aosta region is popular with skiers. A website for the region says skiers frequently access the area by helicopter during winter.
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Russia will help Cuba repair state-run airline Cubana’s mostly grounded fleet, likely by year’s end, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov was quoted as saying by Cuban news agency Prensa Latina on Friday.

Cubana had to cancel most domestic flights last year due to a lack of flightworthy planes and lease aircraft from other companies. The carrier uses mainly Russian and Ukrainian-made Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Antonovs partly because U.S. sanctions prevent it from buying planes with a certain share of U.S. components. Cuba’s cash crunch restricts it from paying for expensive repairs and spare parts.

After a high-level Russian-Cuban intergovernmental commission meeting in Moscow, Borisov said both sides had checked the repairs needed and had written contracts, without giving details on costs.

“Everything has passed to the practical stage and I consider that the Cuban fleet will be re-established in 2019,” he said after meeting with Cuban Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas.

“We agreed in the future to work on creating a services center in Cuba dedicated to the aviation fleet in order to avoid a repetition of a negative situation.”

One of the aircraft Cubana leased, a 39-year-old Boeing 737, crashed in May killing all but one of the 113 onboard. An investigation is underway.

Plans for Russia to upgrade Cuba’s rail network are also advancing, Borisov was cited as saying.

In 2017, state-owned monopoly Russian Railways (RZD) said it was negotiating to upgrade more than 1,000 km (621.37 miles) of Cuban railroads and install a high-speed link between Havana and the beach resort of Varadero, in what would be Cuba’s biggest infrastructure project in decades.

An RZD executive told Reuters in November 2017 the deal would be worth nearly 2 billion euros and signed by the end of the year. Since then, however, the deal’s completion has not been announced.

“We agreed to divide it into stages and optimize the necessary credits in order to carry out this project,” Borisov was cited as saying. “I expect it to be put into practise in a near future.”

 
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The European Commission has added Saudi Arabia to an EU draft list of countries that pose a threat to the bloc because of lax controls against terrorism financing and money laundering, two sources told Reuters on Friday.

The move comes amid heightened international pressure on Saudi Arabia after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2.

The EU’s list currently consists of 16 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea, and is mostly based on criteria used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body composed by wealthy nations meant to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.

But the list has been updated this week, using new criteria developed by the EU Commission since 2017. Saudi Arabia is one of the countries added to the updated list which is still confidential, one EU source and one Saudi source told Reuters.

Saudi authorities did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The move is a setback for Riyadh at a time when it is striving to bolster its international reputation in order to encourage foreign investors to participate in a huge transformation plan and improve financial ties for its banks.

Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post and a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents at its Istanbul consulate on Oct 2, provoking widespread revulsion and damaging the kingdom’s image.

Apart from reputational damages, the inclusion in the list complicates financial relations with the EU. The bloc’s banks will have to carry out additional checks on payments involving entities from listed jurisdictions.

The provisional decision needs to be endorsed by the 28 EU states before being formally adopted next week. Company ownership

A second EU official said other countries are likely to be added to the final list but declined to elaborate as the information is still confidential and subject to changes.

An EU commission spokesman said he had no comment on the content of the list as it had not been finalized yet.

Countries are blacklisted if they “have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union,” the existing EU list says.

Under the new EU methodology, jurisdictions could also be blacklisted if they do not provide sufficient information on ownership of companies or if their rules on reporting suspicious transactions or monitoring financial customers are considered too lax.

Saudi Arabia missed out on gaining full FATF membership in September after it was determined to fall short in combating money laundering and terror financing.

The government has taken steps to beef up its efforts to tackle graft and abuse of power, but FATF said in September Riyadh was not effectively investigating and prosecuting individuals involved in larger scale money laundering activity or confiscating the proceeds of crime at home or abroad.

The EU has reviewed 47 jurisdictions, including the United States, Russia and Switzerland, before updating its list. EU countries were not screened.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is telling his embattled Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, to “stand tall” in the face of national and international calls to step down amid a political crisis.

Maduro’s opponents accuse him of undermining democracy. He has presided over skyrocketing inflation, a collapsing economy and widespread shortages of basic goods.

Erdogan said Thursday he was shocked at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president.

In response to the announcement, Maduro said Wednesday he was ending diplomatic relations with the United States and ordered U.S. diplomats to leave within 72 hours. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Maduro no longer has the authority to do so.

Erdogan maintained that Maduro will prevail “If he continues to stand strong in the path he believes in.”

“Maduro, brother, stand tall. Turkey stands with you,” Erdogan told Maduro by telephone, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted Thursday.

“I thank Russia, China, Turkey, and other governments and people of the world for their strong support of the legitimately established government of Venezuela,” Maduro said in a Twitter post. “Venezuela is not alone!” he added.

Despite the religiously conservative Erdogan and the left-wing Maduro coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the two leaders have built a strong relationship.

Maduro is a regular visitor to Turkey. He attended the Turkish president’s inauguration, while Erdogan visited Venezuela last year. Maduro provoked widespread condemnation after images of him dining at a famous Istanbul steak house went viral. Many Venezuelans are struggling to find enough to eat due to widespread food shortages.

“The support of Erdogan is vital for Maduro,” said Esra Akgemci of Turkey’s Selcuk University.

“It is clear that Maduro sees Turkey as a strategic alliance and wants to build deeper relations,” she added. “The support of Erdogan is more discursive. Erdogan himself had also suffered from a coup attempt [in 2016] and could not find the support he was seeking from the EU and USA, so supporting Maduro against a probable coup would strengthen his position both in internal and international politics.”

During the visit to Caracas, Erdogan pledged that Turkish companies would invest over $4.5 billion in Venezuela. Turkey has an agreement to process tons of Venezuelan gold; a move interpreted as a possible way to circumvent future U.S. sanctions. Turkish Airlines continues daily flights to Caracas, while many other international carriers have stopped service.

Turkish media are also strongly backing Maduro, accusing Washington of seeking to bring down a democratically elected president. “U.S.-backed coup attempt, this time in Venezuela,” read one headline.

“Massive U.S. pressure on any country could devastate its economy, finances, and politics easily. President Maduro’s principled resistance against these international pressures is exemplary,” wrote columnist Hakki Ocal in the pro-government Sabah newspaper.

Murat Yetkin, a well-known liberal journalist tweeted, “U.S.’s post-modern coup attempt in Venezuela cannot be accepted. The suffering of the people who live in the country with the richest oil reserves under the Maduro administration doesn’t change that. The decision cannot be taken by the U.S. or Trump. Next, there might be an occupation, by the U.S. or its collaborators.”

Drawing parallels

Turkish media have drawn parallels between Turkey and Venezuela, after Trump, in a tweet this month, threatened to “devastate” the Turkish economy if Ankara attacked U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish rebels.

In Turkey;’s deeply politically polarized society there is a rare consensus in support of Maduro.

“Most of the people here who can’t find Venezuela let alone Caracas on the map, are all fully behind Maduro,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, “because they think the U.S. again is behind a coup or military intervention, as they did previously in Libya as they did in Egypt, as they did in Iraq. From the most hard core Islamist to the most hard core leftist today in Turkey, there is anti-Americanism. It is deep. It is fervent.”

The social media hashtag #WeAreMaduro, became one of the leading trending topics in Turkey, with many Turks posting images and comments in support for Maduro. The picture of Maduro holding an ancient Turkic flag is widely circulated.

Turkey and Latin America share similar histories of coups throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Many in Turkey accuse the U.S. of being involved in the military takeovers. Turkish ministers openly accused the U.S. of being involved in the 2016 coup attempt, a charge Washington has denied.

Erdogan’s support for Maduro is expected to continue. Analysts point out standing up to what is deemed as “American imperialism” plays well in Turkey, and critical local elections are due to March; however, former diplomat Selcen suggests such support will remain mostly empty words.

“It’s mainly rhetoric,” said Selcen.”There are some rumors that if things go south for Maduro, he can perhaps find refuge in Turkey. But I believe it’s just about pleasing the crowd. When it comes to Venezuela, Turkey does not have the capacity to extend support to Venezuela. It’s out of area.”
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