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The Vatican has an unusual dilemma on its hands after nearly all the nuns in a tiny French religious order threatened to renounce their vows rather than accept the Holy See’s decision to remove their superior.

The sisters argue that the Vatican commissioners sent to replace their superior general, who is also the niece of the order’s founder, have no understanding of their way of life or spirituality. The church’s conclusion — contained in a summary of its investigation provided this week to The Associated Press — is that the Little Sisters of Marie, Mother of the Redeemer are living “under the tight grip” of an “authoritarian” superior and feel a “serious conflict of loyalty” toward her.

The standoff marks an extraordinary battle of wills between the Vatican hierarchy and the group of 39 nuns, most in their 60s and 70s, who run homes for the aged in rural western and southern France. Their threat to leave comes at a time when the Catholic Church can hardly spare them, with the number of sisters plummeting in Europe and the Americas.

The unlikely revolt had been brewing for years but erupted in 2017, when the Vatican suspended the Little Sisters’ government and ordered the superior, Mother Marie de Saint Michel, removed. The Vatican says it took action after local church investigations in 2010 and 2016 found an excessive authoritarianism in her rule and serious problems of governance.

Details of her alleged abuses of authority haven’t been revealed. But within two years of her election as superior in 2000, six sisters had left, church officials say.

“The grave acts posed by Mother Marie de Saint Michel are denounced and the sisters are called to religious and responsible behavior,” the prefect of the Vatican’s congregation for religious, Cardinal Joao Braz di Aviz, wrote the nuns in July.

By then, Braz had already appointed a commissioner and two deputies to run the order. But the Little Sisters refused to accept them and kept Saint Michel in place in the mother house.

As the standoff escalated, 34 of the 39 nuns issued an extraordinary public declaration last month saying they had no other choice but to ask to be relieved of their religious vows.

“We are not making this sacrifice lightly,” they wrote. “We wish to remain in total communion with the church but we cannot signify more clearly, or more painfully either, our incapacity in conscience to obey what we are commanded to do.”

Their plight has garnered sympathy. A French support group, the Support Association of the Little Sisters of Marie, claims to have gotten 3,900 signatures for an online petition demanding the immediate restoration of the central government of the order and removal of the commissioners.

“We are in a situation of blockage,” said Marcel Mignot, president of the support association.

The sisters downplay problems with their superior and say the real dispute is over their local bishop’s decision to split up management of their elder-care homes that had been merged in recent years. They say the bishop used his authority to impose an unjust decision on them without taking their views or the financial implications into account.

“This is about power,” Mignot said, referring to the bishop’s authority over diocesan orders.

The sisters have appealed his decision to the Vatican’s high court “so that the truth can be re-established, but Roman justice takes its time,” the sisters wrote their supporters earlier this year.

Their cherished community was founded in 1954 in Toulouse by Marie Nault, a woman who, according to legend, stopped her formal education at age 11 to work on the family farm but possessed such spirituality that she developed the stigmata — the bleeding wounds that imitate those of Christ on the cross.

Nault took the name Mere Marie de la Croix — Mother Mary of the Cross — and opened four communities in western and southern France which, in 1989, won approval from the bishop to become a diocesan institute of consecrated life.

Born in 1901, Mother Marie died in 1999 and her niece, the current ousted superior, took over a year later. She remains at the mother house in Saint-Aignan sur Roë, in western France. She had been due to step down after her term was up and a new superior was elected, but plans for the election are now in limbo, Mignot said.

The standoff with the Little Sisters comes amid a continuing free-fall in the number of nuns around the world, as elderly sisters die and fewer young ones take their place. The most recent Vatican statistics from 2016 show the number of sisters was down 10,885 from the previous year to 659,445 globally. Ten years prior, there were 753,400 nuns around the world, meaning the Catholic Church shed nearly 100,000 sisters in the span of a decade.

European nuns regularly fare the worst, seeing a decline of 8,370 sisters in 2016 on top of the previous year’s decline of 8,394, according to Vatican statistics.

The Vatican, in its conclusions about the case, said it believed that the majority of the Little Sisters “truly want to follow the Lord in a life of prayer and sacrifice.”

While lamenting the “tight grip” that the superior has over them, the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders told AP that most sisters had been kept in the dark about the management dispute over the elder-care homes — details that even the Vatican commissioners haven’t fully ascertained since they haven’t been able to access the institutes’ finances, the Vatican summary said.

In the past, the Vatican has not been afraid to impose martial law on religious orders, male or female, when they run into trouble, either for financial, disciplinary or other reasons.

St. John Paul II famously appointed his own superiors to run the Jesuits in 1981, some 200 years after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the order altogether. Pope Benedict XVI imposed a years-long process of reform on the Legion of Christ order and its lay branches after its founder was determined to be a pedophile. More recently, the Vatican named a commissioner to take over a traditionalist order of priests and nuns, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Nevertheless, the standoff with the Little Sisters is unusual, said Gabriella Zarri, retired professor of history and expert in women’s religious orders at the University of Florence.

“It’s serious, but it’s also serious that these nuns would do such a violent act as to threaten to leave religious life,” she said. “It’s difficult to understand, other than perhaps because of their attachment to the charism of the founder” and her niece.

Sabina Pavone, a professor of modern history at the University of Macerata, said Catholic archives — especially from Inquisition trials — are full of cases of the Vatican taking action when religious superiors assume “tyrannical” powers over their devoted followers.

While many of the cases date to the period of tremendous growth of religious orders for women in the 1800s, she added, “we shouldn’t be surprised that you find them today” as well.
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Several thousand people gathered Saturday amid a heavy police presence in southern Poland for a “March for Climate” to encourage negotiators at climate talks to set ambitious goals.

Activists from around the world gathered in the main square of the city of Katowice where delegates from almost 200 countries are holding a two-week meeting on curbing climate change.

Some of them were dressed as polar bears, some as orangutans, animals that are facing extinction from man-made global warming and deforestation.

They joined in chants of “Wake up, it’s time to save our home,” and held banners including one reading “Defend our Rights to Food, Land, Water,” as large police units and mounted police looked on.

Earlier Saturday, campaign group Climate Action Network said that one of its employees has been allowed to enter Poland after earlier being stopped by border guards citing unspecified security threats.

The group, an alliance of hundreds of organizations from around the world, said Polish authorities gave Belgium-based activist Zanna Vanrenterghem permission to continue to the U.N. climate summit in Katowice.

The Belgian ambassador in Poland, Luc Jacobs, said Polish border guards had provided him with no details about the case but confirmed that Vanrenterghem was admitted into Poland overnight.

CAN had no immediate information about 12 other activists deported or denied entry to Poland in recent days. Poland introduced temporary random identity checks ahead of the conference, arguing they were needed for security.

 
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The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee warns the United States is being outgunned in cyberspace, already having lost its competitive advantage to Russia while China is rapidly closing in.

“When it comes to cyber, misinformation and disinformation, Russia is already our peer and in the areas of misinformation or disinformation, I believe is ahead of us,” Senator Mark Warner told an audience Friday in Washington.

“This is an effective methodology for Russia and it’s also remarkably cheap,” he added, calling for a realignment of U.S. defense spending.

Warner, calling Russia’s election meddling both an intelligence failure and a “failure of imagination,” strongly criticized the White House, key departments and fellow lawmakers for being too complacent in their responses.

As for China, Warner called Beijing’s cyber and censorship infrastructure “the envy of authoritarian regimes around the world” and warned when it comes to artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G mobile phone networks, China is “starting to outpace us on these investments by orders of magnitude.”

In contrast, the Democratic senator laid out a more aggressive approach in cyberspace, with the United States leading allies in an effort to establish clear rules and norms for behavior in cyberspace.

He also said it was imperative the U.S. articulate when and where it would respond to cyberattacks.

“Our adversaries continue to believe that there won’t be consequences for their actions,” Warner said. “For Russia and China, it’s pretty much been open season.”

Warner also delivered a stern message to social media companies.

“Major platform companies — like Twitter and Facebook, but also Reddit, YouTube and Tumblr — aren’t doing nearly enough to prevent their platforms from becoming petri dishes for Russian disinformation and propaganda,” he said. “If they don’t work with us, Congress will have to work on its own.”

The Trump administration unveiled a new National Cyber Strategy in September, calling for a more aggressive response to the growing online threat posed by other countries, terrorist groups and criminal organizations.

“We’re not just on defense,” National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters at the time. “We’re going to do a lot of things offensively, and I think our adversaries need to know that.”

Top U.S. military officials have also said their cyber teams are engaging against other countries, terrorist groups and even criminal organizations on a daily basis.

Warner on Friday praised elements of the new strategy, particularly measures that have allowed the military to respond to attacks more quickly. But, he said, on the whole it is not enough, pointing to Trump’s willingness to “kowtow” to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their Helsinki Summit over Moscow’s election interference efforts.

“No one in the Trump administration in the intel [intelligence] or defense world doesn’t acknowledge what happened in 2016,” he said. “But the fact that the head of our government still [finds] it’s hard to get those words out of his mouth, is a real problem.”
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An Armenian court on Friday put the nation’s former president in custody on charges linked to a deadly police crackdown on a 2008 protest over alleged voting fraud.

Robert Kocharian, 64, spent two weeks in jail last summer on charges of violating the constitutional order by sending police to break up the protest in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. He was freed on appeal, but on Friday a higher court ordered that he should stay behind bars.

Kocharian’s lawyer said he walked to jail without waiting for police to escort him there.

Kocharian rejects the charges, calling them a political vendetta by incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who helped stage the 2008 protest. The demonstration protested the results of an election two weeks earlier for Kocharian’s replacement. Eight demonstrators and two police died in the clash.

“The main organizer of the events … tries to clean himself of blood,” Kocharian said of Pashinian in a statement Friday.

In the 2008 election, Kocharian, who was president from 1998 to 2008, backed Serzh Sargsyan, who served as Armenia’s president for the following decade.

In April, due to term limits, Sargsyan shifted into the prime minister’s seat in what was seen as an attempt to cling to power. But he stepped down after just six days in office in the face of massive protests organized by Pashinian, who then took the prime minister’s post.

Wiretaps released earlier this week had Pashinian discussing Kocharian’s arrest with the nation’s top security official. Pashinian denounced the released recordings as a “declaration of war” by his political foes.

Pashinian has called an early parliamentary election for this Sunday in a bid to win control of parliament, which is still dominated by members of Sargsyan’s Republican Party. Pashinian’s party is expected to sweep the vote.
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Talks between the opposing sides in the Yemeni conflict are deadlocked on day two of indirect negotiations outside the Swedish capital Stockholm, according to Arab media reports.

U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths has been meeting separately with the Houthi delegation and that of the internationally recognized government. 

The conflict in Yemen has been under way for nearly four years, and the second day of talks showed that many difficult issues remain to be resolved. 

Media reports say the two sides agreed to release captives, though there is no timetable yet to actually begin releasing prisoners.

But Foreign Minister Khaled al Yamani, head of the delegation of the internationally-recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, told journalists such confidence-building measures are a step forward.

He says that releasing prisoners and forcing the Houthis to allow aid into certain regions of the country that they control, in addition to getting them to withdraw from the (Red Sea port of) Hodeida, were the first steps on the road to peace.

However, Jamal Amr, who is a member of the Houthi delegation from Sanaa, told the BBC Arabic service the two sides remain far apart on who should control Hodeida, but the Houthis “would like to avoid any fighting that could potentially damage the port,” which is essential to bring food aid and other goods into the country. 

The U.N. has offered to administer the port, but the Houthis refuse to hand it over.

Another dispute: re-opening Sanaa Airport to commercial air traffic. 

The Houthis, who control the airport, say it should re-open to international flights, without forcing planes to be searched for weapons in Saudi-coalition controlled areas.  

Hamza al Kamali, deputy minister of youth and sports, says the Hadi government and the Saudi-coalition are worried that without searches, weapons will be smuggled in from outside the country.

He says that the Houthis would like to use Sanaa Airport as a military airport, but that the government side considers that unacceptable and thinks traffic should be limited to food aid and commercial goods.

Other key issues include ending a blockade that has divided Taiz — Yemen’s second largest city — and put some of its population in dire straights.

There are also arguments over control of Yemen’s central bank and payment of government employees. The government of President Hadi insists that revenues be deposited at the central bank branch in Aden, which it controls. Houthis reject that demand. 

Yemeni analyst Ezzet Mustapha told Saudi-owned al Arabiya TV that Griffiths “has not done a good job of organizing the talks,” and that he is afraid that they “may degenerate into a battle of rival agendas and irreconcilable demands.” The Houthis, he claims, “are insisting on achieving their political goals before making any concessions.”

Meanwhile, Houthi spokesman Mohammed al Bakhiti, told Arab media that “a new transitional government must be formed (in Sanaa) to replace the Hadi government as well as the Houthi-backed government.” “Then,” he argues, “all the parties inside the country must return to the bargaining table.”
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The search-and-rescue ship Aquarius, which has helped about 30,000 migrants avoid death in the Mediterranean Sea, is suspending its operations.

The humanitarian groups Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee said European governments were forcing them to end the rescue runs.

The Aquarius has been docked in Marseille, France, since early October after Panama revoked its registration at the behest of the right-wing, anti-immigration Italian government.

The ship has been rescuing migrants who were trying to make the dangerous crossing from Libya to Europe in inadequate rafts and dinghies.

“The end of Aquarius means more lives lost at sea; more avoidable deaths that will go unwitnessed and unrecorded. It really is a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for UK and European leaders as men, women and children perish,” Vickie Hawkins, head of MSF UK, said in a statement.

15,000 deaths

The International Organization for Migration said that about 15,000 migrants have drowned in the central Mediterranean since 2013. An estimated 2,133 have died this year alone.

The Aquarius was the last rescue ship operating in the Mediterranean. Last year, five groups were running rescue ships.

At the height of the migrant influx in 2015 and 2016, NGO vessels worked alongside Italian coast guard ships.

The election of Italy’s coalition government this year on an anti-migrant platform rapidly ended the cooperation, and rescue boats have been prevented from docking in Italian ports. Migrant arrivals in Italy have since fallen to pre-crisis levels following a series of hard-line measures drafted by far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

Now rescue missions fall on national coast guard crews from Europe and North Africa, who tend to return the rescued migrants to the country they set off from, usually Libya.

NGO groups describe conditions for the migrants there as “inhuman,” with allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, rape and killings by human smugglers and security forces.

Henry Ridgwell contributed to this report. 
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A rescue operation began Thursday for a British woman who was sailing solo in an around-the-world race and was stranded in the Southern Ocean after a storm battered her boat. 

Susie Goodall texted that she was “safe and secure” after being briefly knocked unconscious when the storm flipped her boat end over end and destroyed its mast.  

On the race website, Golden Globe Race officials said they had been in regular radio contact with Goodall since she regained consciousness. 

Goodall, 29, was the youngest skipper and the only woman participating in the 48,280-kilometer (30,000-mile) race.  

On Wednesday, Goodall texted race officials, “Taking a hammering! Wondering what on earth I’m doing out here,” and sent her position. 

Hours later, she tweeted, “Nasty head bang as boat pitchpoled [somersaulted].” She then tweeted that her rig had been “totally & utterly gutted!” 

She also reported that she’d lost most of her equipment and was unable to make any makeshift repairs. 

Goodall was about 3,200 kilometers (1,990 miles) west of Cape Horn, near the southern tip of South America. Chile diverted a ship to her location to rescue her, and it was expected to reach her Friday. 

The race began on July 1 in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, with 18 skippers from around the world. After Goodall’s exit, just seven remained in the hunt.  The race will end at the same port. 

The sailors are expected to sail alone, nonstop and without outside assistance. They are also not allowed to use most modern technology, including satellite navigation, and the yachts must have been designed before 1988. 
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Just days before scores of countries sign up to a landmark U.N. migration pact, a number of European Union nations have begun joining the list of those not willing to endorse the agreement.

The 34-page U.N. Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is to be formally approved in Marrakech, Morocco, on Dec. 10-11.

The drafting process was launched after all 193 U.N. member states, including the United States under President Barack Obama, adopted in 2016 a declaration saying no country can manage international migration on its own and agreed to work on a global compact

But the United States, under President Donald Trump, pulled out a year ago, claiming that numerous provisions in the pact were “inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies.”

Despite its non-binding nature, Bulgaria signaled this week that it will not sign the pact, as did Slovakia, whose foreign minister resigned in protest at his government’s stance. Meanwhile, Belgium’s government was teetering on the brink of collapse, riven by coalition differences over the pact.

“It’s way too pro-migration. It doesn’t have the nuance that it needs to have to also comfort European citizens,” Belgium’s migration minister, Theo Francken, said Thursday.

“It’s not legally binding, but it’s not without legal risks,” he said, adding that rights laws are being interpreted widely in EU courts and those rulings are tying the hands of migration policy-makers.

Francken said his right-wing N-VA party wants “nothing to do with it.”

But Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel took the migration agreement to parliament Thursday, where it was approved against the wishes of the N-VA, the biggest party in his governing coalition.

The arrival in Europe in 2015 of well over 1 million migrants — most fleeing conflict in Syria or Iraq — plunged the EU into a deep political crisis over migration, as countries bickered over how to manage the challenge and how much help to provide those countries hardest hit by the influx. Their inability to agree helped fuel support for anti-migrant parties across Europe.

Experts say the pact is an easy target. Leaving it can play well with anti-migrant domestic audiences and pulling out has no obvious negative impacts on governments.

“The ones who opposed the global compact, have they read it? It is only a framework of cooperation with all countries,” EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Thursday. “It is not binding. It doesn’t put in question national sovereignty.”

Other EU countries to turn their back on the document are Hungary and Poland, which have opposed refugee quotas aimed at sharing the burden of Mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece and more recently Spain, where most migrants are arriving.

But the withdrawal of Austria — holder of the EU’s presidency until the end of the year — has been of high symbolic importance.

Conservative Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, in a coalition with the nationalist, anti-migration Freedom Party, announced Austria’s departure from the pact in October, highlighting “some points that we view critically and where we fear a danger to our national sovereignty.”

Francken said that never before had the head negotiator for the European states, Austria, “pulled out the plug. That gave a lot of political shock effect in all countries.”

It remains to be seen whether North African countries — and others like Turkey, which the EU has outsourced its migrant challenge to — see this as a new sign that migration management can only be done on Europe’s terms. 
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The “yellow vests” in France are worrying greens around the world.

The worst riots in Paris in decades were sparked by higher fuel taxes, and French President Emmanuel Macron responded by scrapping them Wednesday. But taxes on fossil fuels are just what international climate negotiators, meeting in Poland this week, say are desperately needed to help wean the world off of fossil fuels and slow climate change.

“The events of the last few days in Paris have made me regard the challenges as even greater than I thought earlier,” said Stanford University environmental economist Lawrence Goulder, author of the book “Confronting the Climate Challenge.”

Economists, policymakers and politicians have long said the best way to fight climate change is to put a higher price on the fuels that are causing it — gasoline, diesel, coal and natural gas. Taxing fuels and electricity could help pay for the damage they cause, encourage people to use less, and make it easier for cleaner alternatives and fuel-saving technologies to compete.

These so-called carbon taxes are expected to be a major part of pushing the world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and try to prevent runaway climate change that economists say would be far more expensive over the long term than paying more for energy in the short term.

But it’s not so easy for people to think about long-term, global problems when they are struggling to get by.

Macron said the higher tax was his way of trying to prevent the end of the world. But the yellow vest protesters turned that around with the slogan: “it’s hard to talk about the end of the world while we are talking about the end of the month.”

The resistance to the fuel tax is a personal blow to Macron, who sees himself as the guarantor of the 2015 Paris climate accord, its strongest defender on the global stage. He has positioned himself as the anti-Trump when it comes to climate issues.

The French government quietly fears a Trump-led backlash against the accord could spread to other major economies whose commitment is essential to keeping the deal together.

The fuel tax was not originally Macron’s idea; it dates back to previous administrations. But he vigorously defended it and won the presidency in part on a promise to fight climate change.

So what went wrong?

Yale University economist William Nordhaus, who won this year’s Nobel prize for economics, said the tax was poorly designed and was delivered by the wrong person. “If you want to make energy taxes unpopular, step one is to be an unpopular leader,” he said. “Step two is to use gasoline taxes and call them carbon taxes. This is hard enough without adding poor design.”

Macron, like French presidents before him, made environmental and energy decisions without explaining to the public how important they are and how their lives will change. He’s also seen as the “president of the rich” — his first fiscal decision as president was scrapping a wealth tax. So hiking taxes on gasoline and diesel was seen as especially unfair to the working classes in the provinces who need cars to get to work and whose incomes have stagnated for years.

The French government already has programs in place to subsidize drivers who trade in older, dirtier cars for cleaner ones, and expanded them in an attempt to head off the protests last month. But for many French, it was too little, too late.

The French reaction to higher fuel prices is hardly unique, which highlights just how hard it can be to discourage fossil fuel consumption by making people pay more. In September, protests in India over high gasoline prices shut down schools and government offices. Protests erupted in Mexico in 2017 after government deregulation caused a spike in gasoline prices, and in Indonesia in 2013 when the government reduced fuel subsidies and prices rose.

In the United States, Washington state voters handily defeated a carbon tax in November.

“Higher taxes on fuel have always been a policy more popular among economists than among voters,” said Greg Mankiw, a Harvard economist and former adviser to President George W. Bush.

Even proponents of carbon taxes acknowledge that they can disproportionally hurt low-income people. Energy costs make up a larger portion of their overall expenses, so a fuel price increase eats up more of their paycheck and leaves them with less to spend. And because energy costs are almost impossible to avoid, they feel trapped.

It is also not lost on them that it is the rich, unbothered by fuel taxes, who are hardest on the environment because they travel and consume more.

“The mistake of the Macron government was not to marry the increase in fuel taxes with other sufficiently compelling initiatives promising to enhance the welfare and incomes of the ‘yellow vests,’ said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now the question is “How can we address the climate problem while also avoiding producing political upheaval,” Goulder said.

The key is giving a good chunk of money back to the people, Wesleyan University environmental economist Gary Yohe said.

Many economists back proposals that would tax carbon, but then use that money to offer tax rebates or credits that would benefit lower-income families.

The protests, while sparked by fuel prices, are also about income inequality, populism and anti-elitism, experts say, not just about carbon taxes.

“Is it a death knell for the carbon tax or pricing carbon? I don’t think so,” economist Yohe said. “It is just a call for being a little bit more careful about how you design the damn thing.”
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Police across Europe and in South America have carried out a massive operation targeting members of the Italian ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group, with agents arresting scores of suspects wanted for cocaine trafficking and money-laundering, among other crimes.

In the largest-ever sweep against the organized crime group, 90 people were arrested in Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. One person was also apprehended in Suriname. The coordinated dawn raids were carried out in locations that had been identified by the police in an investigation codenamed “Pollino” that was launched in 2016.

Italy’s national anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, speaking in the Hague, said the arrests were nothing for the ‘Ndrangheta, because thousands of people affiliated with the clan should be arrested.

De Raho stressed that the ‘Ndrangheta has cells that operate and cooperate with each other in a network that covers all of Europe. Officials said 3 to 4 tons of cocaine were seized, 140 kilos of ecstasy pills and 2 million euros in cash. They said the ‘Ndrangheta was laundering money in Italian restaurants and ice cream parlors.

Officials provided details of the maxi operation at the headquarters of Eurojust, the European agency in charge of judicial cooperation in criminal investigations.

Filippo Spiezia, vice president of Eurojust, explained the purpose of the press conference, the first of its kind for an operational case.

“To inform you about an unprecedented and extraordinary result that we have reached today with a joint judicial action that has been carried out in different member states in order to fight ‘Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful organizations — criminal organizations — in the world,” he said.

The ‘Ndrangheta has its base in the southern Italian region of Calabria, but its tentacles extend all over the world. De Raho said the group has infiltrated ports in Europe to ease drug smuggling. He added that coordination among the police forces in different European countries is essential in order to combat these types of criminal activities.

Tuesday’s operation came one day after Italian police arrested Settimino Mineo, the suspected new “boss of bosses” of the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra, along with 45 other alleged mobsters.
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Prime Minister Theresa May said Thursday that British lawmakers faced a choice ahead of a vote on her Brexit deal: approving her deal or facing an exit with no deal or even the reversal of Brexit.

May said she was speaking to lawmakers about giving parliament a bigger role in whether the Northern Irish backstop arrangement would be triggered, though she gave few details.

May said some in parliament were trying to frustrate Brexit and that she did not think another referendum on Brexit was the right course.

“There are three options: one is to leave the European Union with a deal … the other two are that we leave without a deal or that we have no Brexit at all,” May told BBC radio. “It’s clear that there are those in the House of Commons who want to frustrate Brexit … and overturn the vote of the British people and that’s not right.”

May repeatedly sidestepped questions on whether she would delay the Dec. 11 vote but did hint at possible concessions on the Northern Irish backstop.

“There are questions about how decisions are taken as to whether we go into the backstop, because that isn’t an automatic,” she said. “The question is: Do we go into the backstop? Do we extend what I call the implementation period?”

When asked repeatedly what her “Plan B” would be if her deal was rejected, she did not directly answer the questions.
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Russia on Wednesday warned authorities in Cyprus not to allow the U.S. military to deploy on their territory, saying such a move would draw a Russian reaction and result in “dangerous and destabilizing consequences” for the Mediterranean island.

Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Moscow had become aware of what she called “anti-Russian plans” involving Cyprus and the U.S. military which she said was eyeing setting up forward operating bases for its troops there.

“We’re getting information from various sources that the United States is actively studying options to build up its military presence on Cyprus,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow.

“The aim is not being hidden – to counter growing Russian influence in the region in the light of the successful operation by the Russian military in Syria.”

There was no immediate U.S. response to her comments.

Prodromos Prodromou, a spokesman for the Cypriot government, said the island had no desire to further militarize.

“We want to clarify that it has never been our aim, nor do we seek the militarization of Cyprus,” he said, responding to Zakharova’s remarks.

“The Republic of Cyprus, because of its advantageous geographical position, offers facilities for missions of a humanitarian nature, and then only in cases where countries make a request or have a relevant MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the Republic.”

Zakharova said a U.S. delegation had inspected potential sites for the bases and that Washington was engaged in intensive talks with Nicosia on expanding military cooperation.

Cyprus is a popular destination for Russian tourists and capital and many wealthy Russian business people bank or own property there. The island, a former British colony, hosts two British military bases. The United States has an embassy in Nicosia.

Cyprus was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 that followed a Greek-inspired coup. Northern Cyprus is now a Turkish Cypriot state of about 300,000 people that is recognized only by Turkey.

Greek Cypriots run the island’s internationally recognized government which represents the whole island in the European Union.

Cypriot media said the island had recently appointed a military attache to Washington.

Zakharova said Russia had repeatedly warned Cypriot authorities against allowing the island to be further militarized.

“It being drawn into U.S. and NATO plans in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East will inevitably lead to dangerous and destabilizing consequences for Cyprus itself,” she said.

“In Moscow we can’t ignore the anti-Russian element in these (U.S.) plans and in the event that they are implemented we will be forced to take counter measures.”

 
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European Union authorities want internet companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter to file monthly reports on their progress eradicating “fake news” campaigns from their platforms ahead of elections next year.

Officials from the EU’s executive Commission unveiled the measures Wednesday as part of an action plan to counter disinformation in the lead up to the continent-wide vote in the spring.

The internet companies will have to submit their reports from January until May, when hundreds of millions of people in 27 EU member countries are scheduled to vote for 705 lawmakers in the bloc’s parliament.

The Commission singled out Russia.

“There is strong evidence pointing to Russia as a primary source of disinformation in Europe,” said Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip.

Many EU member countries have taken action to combat disinformation, but now “we need to work together and coordinate our efforts,” he said.

Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected Western accusations of sponsoring disinformation campaigns and described them as part of Western efforts to smear the country.

Other measures include a new “rapid alert system,” beefing up budgets, and adding expert staff and data analysis tools.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and browser maker Mozilla are the companies that so far have signed up to a voluntary EU code of conduct on fighting disinformation.

They’ll be expected to report on how they’re carrying out commitments they made under the code, including their work on making political advertising more transparent and how many fake and bot accounts they have identified and shut down. They’ll also provide updates on their cooperation with fact-checkers and academic researchers to uncover disinformation campaigns.

Google, which declined to comment, has tightened up requirements for political ads in the EU, including requiring information on who paid for them and for buyers to verify their identities. Facebook, which did not respond to a request for comment, did the same for political ads in Britain.

U.S. technology giants have committed millions of dollars, tens of thousands of employees and what they say are their best technical efforts into fighting fake news, propaganda and hate that has proliferated on their digital platforms.

“We need to see the internet platforms step up and make some real progress on their commitments,” said Julian King, the EU security commissioner. If there’s not enough headway, the Commission would consider other options including regulation, he said.
…

If British Prime Minister Theresa May loses a vote in parliament on her divorce agreement with the European Union next week, EU leaders won’t rip it up and start negotiating again — but they could help her try to win a second bout.

That help, in the form of new clarifications of how the deal would work or perhaps even small tweaks to agreed text, will not convince the massed ranks of May’s opponents, who see the deal as either too much Brexit or too little. But it would be aimed at winning over enough waverers to salvage the accord.

Senior EU diplomats hope Tuesday’s vote will be close and May can return to parliament and win a second vote. In such a case they could consider helping her with “cosmetic” changes to the non-binding political agreement that accompanies the deal.

But even then, the legally binding text itself, which forms the crux of the debate in Britain, would be off limits to renegotiation. And if a ‘no’ vote in the British parliament is overwhelming, May would be on her own.

“Much will depend on the numbers. If she is short of 15, 30 or 40 votes, we could think of a gesture to let her try again,” said one EU official.

Failure in the vote will transform the quarterly EU summit to be held in Brussels next Thursday and Friday into a “Brexit crisis” meeting, officials say — though the timing may mean it is too soon for May to tell fellow leaders much more than that she has failed at her first attempt and needs more time.

Officials were unanimous in saying the “Pandora’s box” of going back to drafting the legal treaty on Britain’s withdrawal would not be opened.

“There will certainly be no re-negotiation of the withdrawal deal,” a second senior official said. “The question is what will the Brits do if the deal fails in their parliament. We are ready to support them.”

That could range from giving more time for May to find other ways to convince the parliament, to even helping Britain halt the Brexit process altogether, as many EU leaders have regularly said would be their ultimate preferred option.

Said another EU diplomat: “We could look at doing something cosmetic, relatively quickly. First, we would have to hear from May, see what they want,” said another EU diplomat. “And if she falls short of a hundred votes, it’s probably not doable.”

The EU has said repeatedly since sealing the deal with May last month that it would not renegotiate, and has backed May’s position that the offer is the best and only deal possible. Some countries, like France, have a particularly rigid line on offering additional concessions to Britain.

The non-binding political declaration has not been the main bone of contention in the British debate, and it is far from clear that tweaking it would change votes in the House of Commons. Still the suggestion that it could be tweaked may be seen as a sign of greater flexibility.

EU diplomats said unless there is a quick fix and a swift and successful second vote in the British parliament, the case would drag on into 2019, increasing pressure on all sides.

They thought it would be too soon for any major moves at the EU’s final summit of the year next week. It might not even be clear by then whether any changes Britain could seek from the EU would lean towards closer ties after Brexit, or the opposite.

“There is no majority for anything,” another EU official said, noting the difficulty of dealing with the May cabinet and the UK parliament, both split in half on Brexit.

EU diplomats said much would also depend on market reaction should the UK parliament vote down the tentative Brexit accord. If the pound comes under heavy pressure, the British parliament might be more likely to vote in favor the second time.

“There is more concern that May might fail at the first attempt. But we still think she will get it through, eventually,” said another EU diplomat dealing with Brexit.
…

Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, Tuesday highlighted the resilience of embattled Christians in the Middle East during a special service in Westminster Abbey, focusing on their plight in a region that’s turned increasingly harsh for Christianity. 

In a message of hope, Prince Charles said he had been privileged to have met so many “with such inspiring faith and courage” who were battling oppression and persecution, or who have fled to escape it. And he made a plea for peace, saying “extremism and division” are not inevitable.

“Throughout history, in these lands which are the cradle of faith for Jews, Muslims and Christians, communities of different beliefs have shown that it is possible to live side by side as neighbors and friends,” he said. 

“Indeed, I know that in Lebanon, Muslims join Christians at the Shrine of our Lady of Lebanon to honor her together. And I know that there are Muslim faith leaders who have spoken out in defense of Christian communities and of their contribution to the region.”

His remarks from the abbey’s pulpit were made during a service attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as well as Catholic, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders, including four patriarchs from the Middle East. 

“All three of the great Abrahamic faiths believe in a loving, just and merciful God who cares for creation, who cares for his creatures and who expects us to care for one another,” he said. 

Prince Charles has for many years encouraged interfaith dialogue and more recently has expressed  alarm about the challenges facing Christians in the region, especially their prospects in Syria and Iraq. 

Tuesday marked the first time he has spoken from the pulpit on the subject during a church service.

The service at the abbey had a dual aim — to celebrate the contribution Christians make to the region but also to publicize the dangers they face. 

Earlier this week, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned that Christians are on the brink of extinction in the Middle East, due to the threat of violence, murder, intimidation, prejudice and poverty. They are enduring “the worst situation since the Mongol invasions of the 13th century,” he said.

In the last few years, he said, Christians have been “butchered by Islamic State, and in many countries they find themselves squeezed between the upper and lower millstones of pressure from the society and the conflicts that bother the region.” He noted Iraq’s Christian population has decreased by half since 2003.

Archbishop Welby wrote in Britain’s The Sunday Telegraph newspaper: “Whether in large and flourishing communities, such as in Lebanon or Egypt, or smaller, struggling churches, they need the protection and encouragement of governments and people at home and abroad, and foreign popular expression. Without this, they cannot live out their vocation as citizens of their native lands in cooperation with other religious groups.”

A series of recent reports also have highlighted the predicament of Middle East Christians. Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic aid organization, documented significant violations of religious freedom in 38 countries, with many of the abuses caused by the spread of militant Islamism in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

The charity estimates that the Christian population in Syria has fallen dramatically since 2011, from 1.4 million to an estimated 450,000, with many fleeing as their churches have been destroyed. IS both in Syria and Iraq targeted Christians, subjecting them to atrocities, forcible conversion and enslavement.

At the height of the Syrian conflict, Christian refugees in southeast Turkey — many of whom were retreading the steps of their forebears who fled persecution in southern Turkey during the last century — said they often were seen as fair game by an assortment of jihadists and Islamist rebels.

Some refugees said Christians were targeted because they were seen as being pro-Assad, although some of the persecution was motivated by greed, they said, with the better off being targeted first and their property divided by powerful local Sunni Muslim families.

In neighboring Iraq, the Christian minority made up of Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs began to leave the country even before the appearance of IS. In the 1990s, hostility from the government of Saddam Hussein — and after his fall, sectarian killings and bombings, along with an increasingly aggressive Islamist political culture — forced two-thirds of Iraq’s Christians to flee overseas, slashing the population from a pre-Saddam estimate of 1.5 million to 300,000 today.

With the advance by IS militants into the Nineveh plains, the original Assyrian heartland where Christians speak Assyrian as their first language and Arabic their second, the exodus accelerated, according to local Christians. The Nineveh plains are where Thaddeus, an early Jewish convert to Christianity, is thought to have preached the Gospel, sent there by one of the apostles, Thomas.

Prince Charles highlighted the Nineveh plains in his remarks, saying earlier this year he had met a Dominican Sister from Nineveh who, in 2014, as IS advanced on the town of Qaraqosh, “got behind the wheel of a minibus crammed full of her fellow Christians and drove the long and dangerous road to safety.”

He added: “The Sister told me, movingly, of her return to Nineveh with her fellow Sisters three years later and of their despair at the utter destruction they found there. But like so many others, they put their faith in God, and today the tide has turned — nearly half of those displaced having gone back, to rebuild their homes and their communities. … This is the most wonderful testament to the resilience of humanity, and to the extraordinary power of faith to resist even the most brutal efforts to extinguish it.”
…

Norway will pay Brazil $70 million for reducing deforestation in the Amazon in 2017, but is concerned over a more recent surge in destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, according to a Norwegian government statement.

Norway’s statement comes as right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro threatens to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and end environmental fines, spurring activist fears that deforestation could accelerate.

Bolsonaro also pushed the Brazilian government to withdraw its offer to host next year’s United Nations climate conference, saying foreign involvement in the Amazon threatened Brazil’s sovereignty.

Norway’s money will go to the Amazon Fund, a joint project also backed by Brazil and Germany, which helps pay for management of 1 million square km (247 million acres) of Amazon, a system for registering rural properties that aids in monitoring deforestation, and other services aimed at preserving the rainforest.

The annual funding is linked to Brazil’s success in reducing Amazon deforestation in the prior year. Deforestation fell 12 percent in August 2016 to July 2017, the period used to measure annual destruction.

Norway has cut its support for the fund in the past when deforestation spiked. Brazil last month reported a preliminary 13.7 percent rise in deforestation from August 2017 to July 2018. It was the highest level in a decade, signaling a potential impact on next year’s round of international funding.

“These figures will only be verified next year, but the preliminary estimate of increased deforestation gives reasons to concern both in Brazil and in Norway,” the Norwegian statement said.

Norway cut funding for the Amazon Fund to $35 million when deforestation last rose in 2016.

Brazil’s Amazon soaks up massive amounts of carbon dioxide and is seen as a bulwark against global climate change.

A representative for Bolsonaro’s transition team declined to immediately comment.

Norway said it looked forward to discussing cooperation on Amazon preservation with the new government.
…

Belgium’s center-right government is fighting for its survival this week after the largest coalition party broke away from its three partners and said it would not back a global U.N.-backed migration pact.

The right-wing N-VA party started a social media campaign against the migration pact Tuesday, more than two months after Prime Minister Charles Michel pledged he would sign the pact for Belgium at a meeting next week in Marrakech, Morocco.

Instead of a coalition breakup, Michel announced late Tuesday that he would take the issue to parliament for a vote in the days to come.  

“I want parliament to have its say,” Michel said, staving off an immediate collapse of the government that has been in power for three years. “I have the intention to go to Marrakech and let the position of the parliament be known.”

Amid the N-VA upheaval, a Cabinet meeting was canceled Tuesday afternoon and Michel resumed consultations with vice premiers, looking for a way out of the crisis.  

Michel’s statement came at the end of a hectic day dominated by an anti-pact social media campaign by the N-VA.

Covered faces

The in-your-face campaign featured pictures of Muslim women with their faces covered and stated the U.N. pact focused on enabling migrants to retain the cultural practices of their homelands.

The party quickly withdrew the materials after the campaign received widespread criticism.

“We made an error,” N-VA leader Bart De Wever told VRT network.

De Wever apologized for the pictures of women wearing face-covering niqab in Western Europe, but immediately added that “these pictures are not fake. You can take pictures like this every day in Brussels. It is the stark reality.”

Remarking on the party’s withdrawn campaign, Christian Democrat Vice Premier Kris Peeters said: “I only have one word for this: indecent.”

The United Nations says the U.N.’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration will reduce human smuggling and trafficking.

The N-VA said it would force Belgium into making immigration concessions. “In our democracy, we decide. The sovereignty is with the people,” the party said in a statement.

Many experts said the accord is non-binding, but the N-VA said it still went too far and would give even migrants who were in Belgium illegally many additional rights.

The U.N. compact was finalized in July with only the U.S. staying out. Several European nations have since pulled out of signing the accord during the Dec. 10-11 conference in Morocco.  
…

Female parliamentarians have called for a global network to combat issues including online abuse from the public, threats to their safety and discrimination by male colleagues.

A gathering of female members of parliament (MPs) from dozens of countries across the world highlighted shared challenges over gender equality in politics and urged a joint response, said a report on the conference published on Monday by British politician Harriet Harman.

“Women in parliament are pioneers,” said Harman, a member of the opposition Labour party who is the longest-serving female MP in the British lower house of parliament, in a statement. “We have been elected to sit alongside men in our legislatures. But we are, as yet, not on equal terms.”

Women make up less than a quarter of parliamentarians worldwide, according to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an independent organization promoting democracy.

The past year has seen women question why they remain under-represented in public life and senior business positions in a global debate over gender roles after the #MeToo movement spurred a wider debate over their position in society.

​”Virtually all” taking part reported they had faced opposition to their participation in politics, including abuse online and threats in person, said the report on the first “Women MPs of the World Conference” in London last month.

Many said they had been “overtly discriminated against” by colleagues, including not being called on to speak and being blocked from taking roles on committees. 

Some younger MPs also said they had been sexually harassed by older male parliamentarians, while women also said they had faced criticism over their appearance in a way that men did not.

Harman said there was support for the conference to be repeated annually in different parliaments around the world so female MPs can continue to support each other and share ideas.

The push for a global network and future conferences to combat discrimination in politics were backed by democracy organizations.

“Sexism and sexual harassment … should not exist in politics, nor anywhere else,” Silvana Koch-Mehrin, the founder of the Women Political Leaders Global Forum, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We welcome every effort to combat such discriminatory practices.”
…

Two more jailed Catalan separatist leaders awaiting trial for their role in the region’s failed bid to secede from Spain joined a hunger strike started two days ago by two of their companions to protest against their treatment by Spanish courts.

After Catalonia declared independence last year, Madrid took direct control of the region and brought charges including misuse of public funds and rebellion against Catalan leaders, nine of whom are in jail awaiting trial.

Two of the leaders in custody, Josep Rull and Joaquim Forn, released a statement saying they would join the hunger strike started on Saturday by Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Turull.

“We also voluntarily renounce food intake as of 8:00 p.m. on Monday,” the men said in a statement.

The men said they were fasting to support Sanchez and Turull’s protest against the failure of Spanish courts to process numerous appeals in relation to their cases.
…

Kosovo will keep its 100 percent tariffs on Serbian goods until Belgrade recognizes Pristina, Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said Monday, defying calls by the European Union and United States for the tariffs to be abolished.

Last month Haradinaj’s government raised tariffs on locally-produced Serbian and Bosnian goods to 100 percent from 10 percent because Belgrade blocked Kosovo’s membership of Interpol.

The decision effectively halted trade between the two states and was criticized by EU and U.S. officials.

“The tariffs of 100 percent for the goods on Serbia and Bosnia are to protect national security and sovereignty,” Haradinaj wrote on his Facebook page after meeting EU’s Commissioner Johannes Hahn in Pristina.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in a statement Pristina’s measures would lead to the destabilization of the region. He added that there would be no counter measures.

Improved relations is key to the efforts of both Serbia and Kosovo to join the European Union. Both countries agreed to a Brussels-sponsored dialogue in 2013, but little progress has been made. On Monday, Hahn met Vucic in Belgrade.

Kosovo’s mostly ethnic Albanian population declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after a NATO bombing campaign to end the killing of Albanian civilians by Serb forces during a two-year insurgency.

It is now recognized by more than 110 nations but not by Serbia, Russia or five EU states. Belgrade and Moscow have blocked Kosovo from joining the United Nations.

According to official figures, Serbia’s exports to Kosovo amounted to 450 million euros, while imports amounted to 48 million euros.
…

A report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says thousands of unaccompanied children and children who have been separated from their families run the daily risk of sexual and gender-based violence as they travel along the world’s migratory trails. 

“A child who is migrating alone, without the love and protection of a parent, family member or guardian, is arguably one of the most vulnerable people in the world,” said Francesco Rocca, IFRC president.

The report entitled “Alone and Unsafe,” is being released ahead of next week’s meeting in Marrakech where governments are expected to adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. 

The compact, according to Rocca, “is a chance for governments to make life safer for tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of incredibly vulnerable children.” He said the agreement is “an opportunity that governments simply cannot afford to miss.”

The Alone and Unsafe report said when children travel alone, they are at high risk for being assaulted, sexually abused, raped, trafficked into sexual exploitation, or forced into “survival sex.” The children’s exposure to these threats is unrelenting and follows them from their countries of origin, through countries of transit and into countries of destination. 

The U.N. estimated in 2017 that there were at least 300,000 children traveling alone, but exact figures are not available. The IFRC said it believes the figure is much higher. 

“The number of children migrating alone or without their families has grown substantially and alarmingly in the past decade,” Rocca said. “Tragically, unacceptably, these children are easy prey for abusers, exploiters and traffickers.” 
…

The European Union’s migration commissioner is calling on member countries that have turned against a U.N.-backed migration pact to reconsider their opposition.

A conference in Marrakech, Morocco on Dec. 10-11 is due to approve the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which was finalized in July with only the U.S. staying out. But the non-binding accord is drawing strong opposition from nationalists in Europe and elsewhere, and EU countries including Hungary, Austria and Poland have since pulled out or expressed reservations.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos was quoted Monday as telling German daily Die Welt that he doesn’t understand opposition to the pact, which he said forces nothing on anyone. He urged countries rejecting the accord to rethink their opposition in the coming days and join up.
…

Russia’s recent attack on Ukrainian naval vessels will likely top the agenda at a NATO meeting this week as the alliance searches for a robust response in the wake of the Kremlin’s latest act of aggression on Europe’s borders. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to join other foreign ministers for the two-day meeting in Brussels starting Tuesday, where American demands for more military spending from NATO allies will also be discussed. 

Kyiv has warned the likelihood of an all-out war with its neighbor is dangerously high after Russia fired on its vessels last week in the Azov Sea and detained several Ukrainian naval personnel. Moscow has blamed Ukraine for what it called a ‘provocation.’ 

Attending a ceremony to mark the acquisition of new military hardware Saturday, Ukraine’s president urged allies to step forward.

WATCH: Ukraine asks for NATO response

​“This is an enormous threat and together, with our allies, we are searching for an appropriate response to it,” President Petro Poroshenko said. 

The Ukrainian leader wants NATO to send warships to the Azov Sea, which is supposed to be shared between Moscow and Kyiv under a 2003 agreement. Ukraine says Russian warships have blockaded the Kerch Strait off Crimea – the territory it forcibly annexed in 2014 – effectively cutting off Ukrainian Black Sea ports. 

NATO is under pressure to offer a robust response at Tuesday’s foreign ministers’ summit. But speaking last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gave no indication that the alliance is prepared to risk a naval confrontation with Russia.

“We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports and allow freedom of navigation for Ukraine in the sea of Azov and Kerch Strait,” Stoltenberg told reporters. 

Following the incident in the Azov Sea, U.S. President Donald Trump cancelled a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit.

Writing on Twitter last week, Trump wrote, “The European Union, for many years, has taken advantage of us on trade, and then they don’t live up to their military commitment through NATO. Things must change fast!” 

Along with military spending, NATO foreign ministers will also discuss Ukraine and Georgia’s ambitions to join the alliance. Georgia’s new President-elect Salome Zurabishvili has already staked out a tough line on Russia, describing it as an “unpredictable occupying power” – and vowing to push forward her country’s bid to join NATO. 

“We can ask and we’ve been doing that – membership and that is our direction without any alternative – but on that road we can get much more concrete steps and I intend to be more demanding partner for Europeans as well as with our NATO partners,” Zurabishvili told the Reuters news agency. 

The West faces a balancing act in dealing with an increasingly unpredictable Kremlin, says Russia analyst Nicholas Redman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 

“It’s partly about exploiting some of the capacities that Western states have in order to defend themselves. That will require new approaches. It’s also I think about deciding where the points of potential dialogue should come.”

Foreign ministers are also due to discuss Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan, in which about 16,000 personnel from 39 NATO member states and partner countries are involved in training and assisting Afghan forces. 
…

Tens of thousands of people protested in Georgia Sunday against last week’s run-off presidential election, which they believe were rigged.

Backed by the ruling party, Salome Zurabishvili was elected Georgia’s first female president by 59 percent of the vote. But opposition leaders and protesters allege vote-buying, voter intimidation, and other irregularities as they packed the streets of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

Zurabishvili’s opponent Grigol Vashadze addressed the crowd in Tbilisi, calling the election a “criminal farce” and saying that the opposition “demands an early parliamentary election to be held in Georgia.”

Vashadze is backed by allies of former president Mikhail Saakashvili, who is currently in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam.

Saakashvili addressed the crowd via video link Sunday, met by cheers and chanting of his name.

“Georgia’s future is being born on this square today,” he said.

The president’s role in Georgia is largely ceremonial, but the results of the election may be a good indicator of which parties will maintain or seize power in the 2020 parliamentary elections.

Zurabishvili, 66, ran as an independent even though she has the backing of Georgian Dream, headed by former prime minister and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.

She has been criticized over her background and been branded a traitor by some detractors over comments they interpreted as suggesting that Georgia started the 2008 war with Russia.

Zurabishvili was born in France and served as a French diplomat before beginning her political career in Georgia.

 
…

French President Emmanuel Macron visited the graffiti-damaged Arc de Triomphe monument and held an emergency meeting on security Sunday, a day after central Paris was hit by France’s worst riot in a generation.

Macron, who was meeting with his prime minister and interior and environment ministers, has vowed that those responsible for the violence and the damages will pay for their actions. His tour of France’s beloved monument came just hours after he flew back from the G-20 summit in Argentina.

Macron paid tribute to the Unknown Soldier from World War I whose tomb is under the monument. He then headed to a nearby avenue where activists wearing yellow jackets had torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and battled police on Saturday. There he met with firefighters, police officers and restaurant owners.

Paris police said Sunday that 133 people had been injured and 412 had been arrested as protesters trashed the streets of the capital during a demonstration Saturday against rising taxes and the high cost of living.

Charred cars, broken windows and downed fences from the riot littered many of the city’s most popular tourist areas on Sunday, including major avenues near the Arc de Triomphe, streets around the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue, and the Tuileries garden. Graffiti was also sprayed on many stores and buildings.

Activists wearing yellow jackets had torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores, threw rocks at police and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti. French police responded with tear gas and water cannon, closing down dozens of streets and Metro stations as they tried to contain the riot.

Police said 23 police officers were among the injured and 378 of the arrested have been put in police custody.

By Sunday morning, Paris city employees were cleaning up the graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe. One slogan read: “Yellow jackets will triumph” — a reference to the fluorescent yellow vests that protesters wore to demand relief for France’s beleaguered workers.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said Saturday’s violence was due to extremists who hijacked the protest, people who came “to loot, break and hit police forces.” He was asked why thousands of French police couldn’t prevent the damage, especially to the Arc de Triomphe.

“Yesterday we made a choice … to protect people before material goods,” Griveaux told French broadcaster BFM TV on Sunday.

It was the third straight weekend of clashes in Paris involving activists dressed in the yellow vests of a new protest movement and France’s worst urban violence since at least 2005. The scene in Paris contrasted sharply with protests elsewhere in France on Saturday that were mostly peaceful.

“It’s difficult to reach the end of the month. People work and pay a lot of taxes and we are fed up,” said Rabah Mendez, a protester marched peacefully Saturday in Paris.

The demonstrators say Macron’s government does not care about the problems of ordinary people. The grassroots protests began Nov. 17 with motorists upset over a fuel tax hike but now involve a broad range of demands related to France’s high cost of living.

Macron, speaking in Buenos Aires before he flew home, welcomed the views of the protesters but said there was no place for violence in public discourse.

“[Violence] has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said.

 
…

Eleven migrants rescued by a trawler last week have been handed over to the Maltese coast guard and will soon reach port in Malta, a Spanish aid group said Sunday.

Proactiva Open Arms says on Twitter that the Spanish trawler Nuestra Senora de Loreto radioed them to say the migrants had been transferred.

Earlier Sunday the Spanish government told the trawler that it had permission to dock in Malta, putting an end to its weeklong wait in the open sea.

Malta, along with Italy, had initially refused to accept the boat because it had rescued the migrants in Libyan waters. The trawler rescued 12 migrants last week. One migrant was evacuated for health reasons on Friday.

European Union countries have been sharply at odds over who should take in migrants from North Africa. So far this year the International Organization for Migration says 107,216 migrants have arrived in Europe and 2,123 others have died or gone missing in their dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea.
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of being a “slow learner” who again tried to meddle in U.S. elections in November, adding that he had no trust in the Russian leader.

The remarks by Mattis at a security forum in California came a day after President Donald Trump held informal talks with Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 industrialized nations meeting in Argentina. Trump had scrapped a more formal meeting with Putin, citing Russia’s treatment of Ukraine.

Asked if U.S.-Russian ties had become more strained since he took over the Pentagon last year after Trump became president, Mattis said, “There’s no doubt the relationship has worsened.”

“(Putin) tried again to muck around in our elections this last month. And we are seeing a continued effort along those lines,” Mattis said, adding that the United States would take whatever steps were necessary to defend American democracy.

Election interference

American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to sow discord and boost Trump’s chances through a campaign of propaganda and hacking aimed at disparaging his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. A special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in that election and whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow has cast a cloud over his presidency.

The comments by Mattis were the latest sign of deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow. Russia has denied meddling. Trump has said there was no collusion.

Ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm congressional elections, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials accused Russia of trying to influence the vote. U.S. prosecutors in October charged a Russian national with playing a financial role in a Kremlin-backed plan to conduct “information warfare” against the United States, including attempts to influence the midterm election.

Russia-Ukraine tensions

Russian forces opened fire on Ukrainian naval vessels last weekend and seized them and their crew near Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Mattis said those actions underscored why the international community was increasingly distrustful of Moscow.

“Mr. Putin is clearly a slow learner. He is not recognizing that what he is doing is actually creating an animosity against his people,” Mattis said.

“What we are seeing Putin do with his ripping up of international agreements … we’re dealing with someone that we simply cannot trust,” the Pentagon chief added.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders on Saturday confirmed Trump’s encounter with Putin in Argentina in a statement, saying, “As is typical at multilateral events, President Trump and the first lady had a number of informal conversations with world leaders at the dinner last night, including President Putin.”

Speaking in Buenos Aires, Putin told reporters Saturday there were no preconditions for future bilateral talks with Trump.

“It is regrettable that we can’t succeed in holding a full-scale meeting, which is long due,” Putin said, adding that issues of strategic stability would be of paramount importance.

Pompeo dismisses ‘parlor game’

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday said the Ukraine events were the only reason Trump canceled his planned formal meeting with Putin in Argentina, not developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

The decision to scrap the meeting with Putin came shortly after Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge of lying to Congress about a skyscraper project Trump was pursuing in Moscow during the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

“Ludicrous; Washington parlor game,” Pompeo said in a CNN interview at the G-20 meeting when asked whether Trump was motivated to cancel the meeting by Cohen’s guilty plea.
…

Despite freezing temperatures, tens of thousands of Romanians turned out Saturday to celebrate 100 years since their nation became a modern-day state, with some noting concerns now about the rule of law and the state of democracy in the Balkan nation. 

Romanians waving the country’s flag attended huge military parades in Bucharest and Alba Iulia, the Transylvanian city that symbolizes Romania’s 1918 reunification. Crowds braved temperatures of -5 degrees C (23 degrees F) to watch tanks and military vehicles drive under the Triumphal Arch built after World War I. 

While most considered the event a national celebration, some booed anti-riot police who participated in Saturday’s parade. That anger comes after police clashed in August with anti-corruption protesters, leaving 450 people injured.  

Members of the ruling Social Democratic Party were booed at a ceremony in Alba Iulia, where President Klaus Iohannis, a political rival, called for Romanians to build a “dignified and powerful country, integrated through education, culture and creativity into a Europe of values, prosperity and freedom.” 

Cries of ‘Resign!’

More than 1,000 Romanians gathered Saturday evening outside government offices in Bucharest to protest high-level corruption, yelling, “Resign!”  

Electrician Gabriel Ene said he was glad that Romanians had “a free voice” but said the laws that the Social Democrat government wanted to pass “will support liars and thieves.” 

Other Romanians celebrated the day with the traditional dish of cabbage rolls stuffed with minced meat and rice and polenta.   

The U.S. and the European Union are among those criticizing a judicial overhaul in Romania by the Social Democrats that they claim will undermine the fight against government corruption. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thanked Romania for contributing to global and Black Sea security as a NATO member and participating in missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. His statement said Washington stands with Romania “in its efforts to uphold democratic values and the rule of law … which are … the foundation of economic growth and prosperity.” 

Romania entered World War I aligned with Britain, France and other allies in 1916 but capitulated to the Central powers led by Germany. It re-entered World War I in 1918, and doubled its territory after the end of the war. 

That was partly thanks to Romanian Queen Marie, the granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria and of Russia’s czar, who warned the Allied victors there could be an uprising if Romania didn’t reunite with Transylvania, which until the war had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  

The end of World War I brought about the end of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire.  
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