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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged greater cooperation on migration while making his first visit Monday to Morocco, a jumping-off point for a growing number of migrants trying to reach Spain and get a foothold in Europe.

Spain is one of the North African kingdom’s strongest European allies, and enhanced collaboration on all levels was a focus of Sanchez’s visit. It was among the topics discussed at a lunch hosted by Moroccan King Mohammed VI, the official MAP news agency said.

Controlling migration from Morocco to Spain was the focus of Sanchez’s talks with Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani.

“Migration is a shared responsibility, and we need to strengthen our cooperation,” Sanchez said at their joint news conference.

El Othmani said Morocco “is doing everything in its power” to fight illegal immigration, but insisted the complex issue “cannot be solved solely by the security approach.”

“Despite the importance of security, we must focus on the development of countries of departure in Africa,” Othmani said.

Many migrants in Morocco who embark for Spain are sub-Saharan Africans.

Moroccan authorities say the kingdom prevented 65,000 migrants from crossing to Spain in 2017. However, Morocco says it cannot be the region’s immigration police.

Morocco’s place as a point of passage has grown with Italy’s refusal to take in migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya. The Libyan coast guard, with help from the Italian government, increasingly has intercepted flimsy boats launched by migrant smugglers.

Migrants head to northern Morocco with the aim of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain or climbing over high fences to reach the Spanish enclaves in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla.

Nearly 47,500 migrants arrived in Spain by sea since the start of the year, while 564 died or went missing while attempting the voyage, according to the International Organization of Migration.

Morocco, along with Tunisia and Algeria, has refused to serve as an immigration reception and processing center, an idea proposed by the European Union. Morocco instead wants more EU funding to help manage migration across its borders.

Morocco is scheduled to host an international U.N.-sponsored conference on migration on December 10-11.
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Britain is facing weeks of high-stakes political drama, as Prime Minister Theresa May attempts to get parliamentary backing for the divorce deal agreed to last week with the European Union. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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France wants to boost the number of foreign students at its universities by more than half over the next decade and will offer more courses taught in English to attract them.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, announcing the plan on Monday, said increasing the number of foreigners studying in the country would help build French influence overseas.

Home to centuries-old universities such as the Sorbonne in Paris and some leading business schools, France is the world’s top non-English speaking student destination, but it ranks behind the United States, Britain and Australia.

The number of foreign students at French universities fell by 8.5 percent between 2011 and 2016 and the country has seen increased competition from Germany, Russia, Canada and China, the prime minister’s office said.

“Many countries are already building global attractivity strategies, linking studies, the job market, tourism, which explains the influence of Asia or monarchies in the Gulf,” Philippe said in a speech unveiling the strategy. “In this field just as in other economic ones, the world’s balance of power is shifting. That’s why we need to welcome more foreign students.”

Under the plan, France will simplify student visa regulations but will also increase tuition fees for students outside the European Economic Area in order to be able to provide better facilities. However, fees will still be much lower than in Britain and other neighboring countries.

From March 2019, foreign graduates with a French master’s degree will be able to get a residence visa to look for work or set up a business in France.

“We are constantly compared, audited, judged among 10 other possible destinations. In an age of social media, no one can rest on its reputation only,” Philippe said.

French officials said current fees of around 170 euros ($195) a year for a bachelor’s degree in France or 243 euros for a masters’ — the same as those paid by French students — was interpreted by students in countries like China as a sign of low quality.

From September 2019, non-European students will be charged 2,770 euros annually to study for a bachelor’s degree and 3,770 euros a year for masters and PhDs.

“That means France will still subsidize two thirds of the cost of their studies,” Philippe said. “And the fees will remain well below the 8,000 euros to 13,000 euros charged by the Dutch or the tens of thousands of pounds paid in Britain,” he said.

Some of the extra revenue will be used to boost the number of scholarships offered by the foreign ministry.

The number of courses taught in English, which have already been increased fivefold since 2004 to 1,328, will be boosted further, Philippe said.

More French classes will also be on offer for foreign students and student visa applications will be made available online.
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British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will visit Iran for the first time on Monday for talks with the Iranian government on issues including the future of the 2015 nuclear deal, his office said in a statement.

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal, negotiated with five other world powers during Democratic president Barack Obama’s administration, and earlier this month the United States restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transportation sectors.

Hunt’s office said he would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and would stress that the UK is committed to the nuclear deal as long as Iran sticks to its terms. He will also discuss European efforts to maintain nuclear-related sanctions relief.

“The Iran nuclear deal remains a vital component of stability in the Middle East by eliminating the threat of a nuclearized Iran. It needs 100 percent compliance though to survive,” Hunt said in a statement ahead of the visit.

“We will stick to our side of the bargain as long as Iran does. But we also need to see an end to destabilizing activity by Iran in the rest of the region if we are going to tackle the root causes of the challenges the region faces.”

Hunt will also discuss Iran’s role in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, his office said, and press Iran on its human rights record, calling for the immediate release of detained British-Iranian dual nationals where there are humanitarian grounds to do so.

“I arrive in Iran with a clear message for the country’s leaders: putting innocent people in prison cannot and must not be used as a tool of diplomatic leverage,” he said.

 
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Romanian prosecutors are investigating whether a painting by Pablo Picasso that was snatched from a museum in the Netherlands six years ago has turned up in Romania.

Four Romanians were convicted of stealing Picasso’s “Tete d’Arlequin” and six other valuable paintings from the Kunsthal gallery in Rotterdam.

One of them, Olga Dogaru, told investigators she burned the paintings in her stove to protect her son, the alleged leader of the 2012 heist. She later retracted the statement.

Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism said Sunday it was examining the circumstances of a painting a fiction writer said she found under a tree after receiving an anonymous tip.

The work, purported to be the stolen Picasso, was given to the Dutch embassy in Romania on Saturday.
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Finland’s president says that he briefed U.S. President Donald Trump amid the California wildfires on how the Nordic country effectively monitors its substantial forest resources with a well-working surveillance system.

President Sauli Niinisto said in an interview published Sunday in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper that he told Trump during their brief meeting in Paris on Nov. 11 that “Finland is a country covered by forests but we also have a good surveillance system and network” in case of wildfires.

Trump said Saturday in northern California that wildfires weren’t a problem in Finland because the Finns “spend a lot of time on raking” leaves and “cleaning and doing things.”

Niinisto said he told Trump “we take care of our forests,” but said that he can’t recall anything being mentioned on raking.
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“Injustice is the perverse root of poverty,” Pope Francis said Sunday at a Mass marking the Roman Catholic Church’s Day of the Poor.

Francis invited thousands of poor people to Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Mass and he is scheduled to have lunch with them later.

“The cry of the poor daily becomes stronger, but heard less, drowned out by the din of the rich few, who grow ever fewer and more rich,” Francis said.

He also made a reference to migrants when he called on people to pay attention to “all those forced to flee their homes and native land for an uncertain future.”

The leader of the world’s Roman Catholics said, “Let us ask for the grace to hear the cry of all those tossed by the waves of life.”

Sunday is the second observance of the Day of the Poor, an event that Francis initiated last year.

In addition to lunching with the poor after Mass, Francis has gathered a team of doctors who will provide free medical care to the poor.

The French news agency, AFP, reports doctors treated 600 people last year at the first World Day of the Poor.
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British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it’s for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Germany needs a package of tax cuts and other measures to shore up economic growth in the long term, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said in an interview published Sunday, days after the country posted its first economic contraction since 2015.

Altmaier, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing conservatives, said he was focused on cutting high German corporate taxes following tax cuts in the United States, Britain and soon France.

“The corporate tax in Germany is now higher than in other industrial countries,” Altmaier told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “That is a disadvantage and puts jobs at risk. That is why a medium-term cut is necessary.”

He proposed using half of the increase in tax revenues to fund the tax cuts and said it was imperative to ensure that contributions for social benefits did not grow beyond 40 percent of a person’s gross salary.

Economy contracted

Gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe’s biggest economy fell 0.2 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, according to data released Wednesday by the Federal Statistics Office.

At the time, Altmaier said the contraction was not “a catastrophe,” and his ministry called the slowdown a temporary phenomenon that occurred as car companies struggled to adjust to new pollution standards known as WLTP.

Welt am Sonntag said Altmaier, a close Merkel ally, hoped to parlay concern over the downturn in the third quarter to gain support for tax cuts from Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and his left-leaning Social Democratic party (SPD).

“We need clarity about relief for workers and industry, including the stepwise reduction of the solidarity tax for everyone, less bureaucracy and more innovation,” Altmaier said.

Missed opportunities

Clemens Fuest, head of the Ifo economic institute, said the German coalition government had missed opportunities in recent years to strengthen economic growth.

“It’s important to create new spots in kindergartens, but policymakers should not call those investments at a time when it is not making needed infrastructure investments in rail routes or power lines,” Fuest told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

He also faulted the coalition government for its piecemeal approach to digitalization, and called for efforts to strengthen the longer-term competitiveness of the German auto industry, instead of focusing solely on environmental protections.
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The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that U.S.-led coalition airstrikes killed more than 40 people in the village of Abu Husn in the region of Deir el-Zor, near the Iraqi border.

Arab media announced the deaths of several dozen people, most of whom appeared to have been Islamic State group fighters, during bitter fighting in the Deir el-Zor region of eastern Syria, not far from the Iraqi border.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that about three dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in the airstrikes on the village of Abu Husn. A number of civilians and family members of the IS fighters also were killed.

Abdel Rahman insisted that “it was the highest death toll in coalition airstrikes since (U.S.-aligned Kurdish fighters) launched their attack against this (particular northeastern Syrian) Islamic State pocket in September.

U.S. Coalition spokesman Sean Ryan told the French news agency earlier this week “the avoidance of civilian casualties is our highest priority when conducting strikes against legitimate military targets with precision munitions.”

Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, tells VOA that bad weather conditions in recent days have allowed IS fighters to gain ground against the U.S.-led alliance of Kurdish SDF fighters, alongside U.S. and French forces, prompting strong efforts to push them back.

He says that the final pockets of Islamic State fighters have taken advantage of poor weather conditions (and cloud cover) to capture positions and equipment belonging to the U.S. coalition, prompting fierce fighting in an effort to recapture lost ground.

Abou Diab says the Islamic State pocket in the region of Deir el-Zour is one of several he says are supported by different countries involved in the Syria conflict. He argues that a separate Islamic State faction, supported by the Syrian government, has been involved in attacking Druze civilians and holding them hostage in the southern region of Sweida.
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Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.

A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country.

Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest.

About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to gates outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he has not been briefed on a Central Intelligence Agency report that concludes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of a Saudi journalist, but that he would be briefed later in the day.

“We will be talking with the CIA later and lots of others. I’ll be doing that while I’m on the plane,” Trump told reporters at the White House before departing on a flight to California. “I’ll also be speaking with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.”

The assessment by the CIA, first reported by The Washington Post Friday, contradicts that of Saudi Arabia, whose top prosecutor one day earlier exonerated the crown prince in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

U.S. officials say the CIA concluded that 15 Saudi agents flew in a Saudi government aircraft to Istanbul and assassinated Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate.

Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post and was a critic of the Saudi crown prince, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October while he was trying to get documents for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

The Post said the CIA based its conclusion on multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother, Khalid bin Salman, who is also the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi.

In the phone call, Khalid told Khashoggi that it would be safe for him to go the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents for his marriage. The paper said it was not known whether or not Khalid knew Khashoggi would be killed.

Khalid denied he had spoken with Khashoggi in a tweet Friday.

“The last contact I had with Mr. Khashoggi was via text on Oct. 26, 2017. I never talked to him by phone and certainly never suggested he go to Turkey for any reason. I ask the U.S. government to release any information regarding this claim,” he said.

Saudi officials say the killing of Khashoggi was accidental and say that officials were trying to force Khashoggi to return to the kingdom.

Turkish officials have said the killing was intentional and have been pressuring Saudi Arabia to allow those responsible to be tried in Turkey.

The Trump administration this week sanctioned 17 Saudi officials for their alleged role in the killing. However, some U.S. lawmakers have called on the White House to do more, including reducing the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.

President Donald Trump has said the Saudi government has tried to cover up the killing and has said “the cover-up was one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups.”

However, Trump has resisted calls to reduce arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. president has sought closer ties with Saudi Arabia to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East as well as to increase arms trade deals between Washington and Riyadh.
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U.S. Sen. John McCain was posthumously given the 2018 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award in a ceremony in London on Thursday night. The award recognizes those who have fought for human rights in Russia and is named after a lawyer who was killed in a Moscow jail in 2009.

John McCain’s daughter Meghan accepted the award on behalf of her late father. In a speech she contrasted his legacy with what she called the “bloody-handed dictator of Russia.”

“John McCain defended and vindicated the memory of ordinary men and women with integrity, like Sergei Magnitsky. Vladimir Putin has them murdered. John McCain was a strong man. Vladimir Putin is weak man’s idea of a strong man. John McCain on his death was remembered with gratitude and praised by the nation he served and loved. Vladimir Putin knows well that the greatest risk to his own life is his own people, and that he will be remembered as a tyrant and a thief,” Meghan McCain told the audience in London.

John McCain became a prominent critic of Donald Trump’s dealings with Russian leader Putin, criticism that the U.S. president strongly rejected.

McCain died in August from brain cancer at age 81.

Several other awards were made Thursday night, including to Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, and to the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a 20-year jail term in Russia.

Magnitsky was beaten to death in police custody in 2009 after investigating a $230 million tax fraud allegedly carried out by senior Russian officials.

Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, employed Magnitsky to investigate the fraud. He campaigned for the U.S. to adopt the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which allows the withholding of visas and the freezing of assets of human rights offenders. John McCain was key in pushing the legislation through Congress. Several other countries have since adopted similar legislation, including Canada and Britain.

“And so starting next year, we’re not just going to honor Russian heroes, but in the spirit of the global Magnitsky Act, we’re going to honor heroes from around the world,” Browder said Thursday night.

Meanwhile this week, the United States used the Magnitsky Act to sanction 17 Saudi officials accused of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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The U.S. Justice Department denied it was planning to extradite Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, following a media report suggesting Washington was looking into the extradition in exchange for Ankara’s easing of its pressure on Saudi Arabia.

“The Justice Department has not been involved in nor aware of any discussions relating the extradition of Fethullah Gulen to the death of Jamal Khashoggi,” Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman said.

NBC News reported Thursday that the Trump administration had been seeking ways to extradite Gulen, as a means to persuade Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to ease pressure on Saudi Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania and denies Ankara’s accusation of involvement in a failed coup in Turkey in 2016.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department denied any deal to extradite Gulen, but spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, “We continue to evaluate the material that the Turkish government presents requesting his extradition.” 

Turkish media reported Friday that President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Erdogan, and the two men “agreed to shed light on the Jamal Khashoggi murder in all its aspects and that any cover-up of the incident should not be allowed.”

Gulen’s extradition is a top diplomatic priority for Turkey, but Ankara has dismissed any talk of a deal.

“Turkey’s pending request for Fethullah Gulen’s extradition from the United States and the investigation into Khashoggi’s murder are two separate issues. They are not connected in any way, shape or form,” said a senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“At no point did Turkey offer to hold back on the Khashoggi investigation in return for Fethullah Gulen’s extradition,” he added.

Analysts point out it’s doubtful Washington could make such an offer, given Gulen’s extradition is a matter for the courts, which experts say is a potentially lengthy and challenging process. Also, given that Erdogan sees the Saudi crown prince as his chief rival in the region, his goals may extend well beyond an extradition.

Trump has sought closer ties with Saudi Arabia to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East, as well as to increase arms deals between Washington and Riyadh.

VOA’s Mehmet Toroglu and Dorian Jones contributed to this report.
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Russian Ambassador to Finland Pavel Kuznetsov has been summoned to a meeting on Monday with Finnish state secretary Matti Anttonen over the disruption of Finland’s global positioning system (GPS) signal during recent NATO war games. 

“We don’t have anything to hide here. Disruption is a serious matter which disturbs civil aviation. We will act towards Russia, we will discuss this and we expect answers,” Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini said in a statement to public broadcaster Yle while on a state visit to the United States. 

The Finnish foreign ministry said Thursday that the disruption of Finland’s GPS signal during recent NATO war games came from Russian territory. 

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed an earlier allegation from Finland that Russia may have intentionally disrupted the signal during the war games. 

Earlier in November, Finland’s air navigation services issued a warning for air traffic because of a large-scale GPS interruption in the north of the country. Russia was also recently accused by Norway, which had posted a similar warning in its own airspace. 

inland is not a NATO member but it took part as an ally in NATO’s largest exercise in decades, which ended Wednesday. 

Forces from 31 countries participated in the games close to  Russia, in an area stretching from the Baltic Sea to Iceland. 

Finland shares an 833-mile (1,340-km) border and a difficult history with Russia. 
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American prosecutors have obtained a sealed indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose website published thousands of classified U.S. government documents, a U.S. federal court document showed Thursday.

The document, which prosecutors say was filed by mistake, asks a judge to seal documents in a criminal case unrelated to Assange, and carries markings indicating it was originally filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, in August.

A source familiar with the matter said the document was initially sealed but unsealed this week for reasons that are unclear at the moment.

On Twitter, Wikileaks said it was an “apparent cut-and-paste error.”

U.S. officials had no comment on the disclosure in the document about a sealed indictment of Assange. It is unclear what charges Assange faces.

But Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office that filed the document that was unsealed, told Reuters, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.”

Reuters was unable to immediately reach Assange or his lawyers to seek comment.

Charges confidential

Prosecutors sought to keep the charges confidential until after Assange’s arrest, the document shows, saying the move was essential to ensure he did not evade or avoid arrest and extradition in the case.

Any procedure “short of sealing will not adequately protect the needs of law enforcement at this time because, due to the sophistication of the defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” the document reads.

It adds, “The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”

U.S. officials have previously acknowledged that federal prosecutors based in Alexandria have been conducting a lengthy criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and its founder.

Calls for prosecution

Representatives of the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have publicly called for Assange to be aggressively prosecuted.

Assange and his supporters have periodically said U.S. authorities had filed secret criminal charges against him, an assertion against which some U.S. officials pushed back until recently.

Facing extradition from Britain to Sweden to be questioned in a sexual molestation case, Assange six years ago took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy, where initially he was treated as a welcome guest.

But following a change in the government of the South American nation, Ecuadorean authorities last March began to crack down on his access to outsiders and for a time cut off his internet access.
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Ethically driven businesses are becoming increasingly popular and profitable but they can face threats for shaking up the existing order, entrepreneurs said on Social Enterprise Day.

When Meghan Markle wore a pair of “slave-free” jeans on a royal tour of Australia last month, she sparked a sales stampede and shone a spotlight on the growing number of companies aiming to meet public demand for ethical products.

“Right now is the perfect time to have this kind of business,” said James Bartle, founder of Australia-based Outland Denim, which made the $200 (150 pound) jeans. “There is awareness and people are prepared to spend on these kinds of products.”

Social Enterprise Day

Social Enterprise Day, which celebrates firms seeking to make profit while doing good, is being marked in 23 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Romania and the Philippines, led by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), which represents the sector.

Outland Denim is one such company, employing dozens of survivors of human trafficking and other vulnerable women in Cambodia to make its jeans, which all contain a written thank-you message from the seamstress on an internal pocket.

Bartle said he wanted to create a sustainable model that gives people power to change their future through employment.

More companies are striving to clean up their supply chains and stamp their goods as environmentally friendly and ethical, with women and millennials, people born between 1982 and 2000, driving the shift to products that seek to improve the world.

“For-profits create the mess, and then the not-for-profits clean it up,” said Andrew O’Brien, director of external affairs at SEUK, which estimates that 2 million British workers are employed by a social enterprise. “We are an existential threat to that system, by coming through the middle and forcing businesses to change the way they do business.”

Risky business 

Britain has the world’s largest social enterprise sector, according to the U.K. government. About 100,000 firms contribute 60 billion pounds ($76 billion) to the world’s fifth largest economy, SEUK says.

Elsewhere in the world, it can be a risky business.

“I get threats,” said Farhad Wajdi who runs Ebtakar Inspiring Entrepreneurs of Afghanistan, which helps women enter the workforce by training and providing seed money for them to operate food carts in the war-torn country. “I can’t go to the provinces.”

His work has met resistance in parts of Afghanistan, a conservative society where women rarely work outside the home.

“A social enterprise can lead to sustainable change in those communities,” Wajdi said on the sidelines of the Trust Conference in London. “It can propagate gender equality and create friction for social change at a grassroots level.”

Niche? Window dressing?

There is, however, a danger that social enterprise will remain a niche form of business or become window-dressing for firms that just want to improve their public image.

“I don’t want social enterprise to become the next (corporate social responsibility), another (public relations) move,” said Melissa Kim, the founder of Costa Rican-based Uplift Worldwide, which supports social enterprises.

“To me this is just good business, and good sustainable business is not just about the environment and human rights … if you care about your relationships internally and externally you will stay in business.”
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The three candidates competing to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) agreed on Thursday to revive their party’s fortunes by cutting taxes and reducing Germany’s dependence on the United States for defense.

In a strikingly good-humored three-hour debate in the northern city of Luebeck, the first of eight meetings with party grass roots across Germany before a leadership vote on Dec. 7, the rivals barely clashed on broad policy.

While there were different nuances on details, the three agreed to work to improve the integration of migrants, focus more on affordable housing, cut subsidies to poorer eastern states and further Merkel’s digitalization drive.

The race for leader of the Christian Democratic Union party has shaped up as a dual between Merkel protege Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely seen as the continuity option, and Friedrich Merz, a millionaire who describes himself as “a free-trade man.”

Merkel has said she will remain chancellor atop a ‘grand coalition’ with the CDU’s Bavarian sister party and Social Democrats until the end of her term in 2021.

CDU General Secretary Kramp-Karrenbauer, the front-runner, won applause for saying she would continue the process of renewal, by taking into account the views of the party base.

Former Merkel rival Merz said he aimed to take the CDU back over the 40 percent mark and halve support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), currently polling at around 16 percent. The CDU is at around 26-27 percent in most surveys.

“It is our job to do this,” he said, adding the CDU had to make clear it had not forgotten voters who felt neglected after the influx of some 1.5 million migrants since 2015.

Health Minister Jens Spahn, the third candidate and an arch-critic of Merkel’s migrant policy, said CDU policy had in part led to the rise of the AfD, now represented in all of Germany’s 16 states. “We can also get rid of them,” he said.

All three candidates promised to work with each other after the leadership election and stressed their mutual respect.

“I will not criticize the others, we will only say good things about each other … In the end, the party must be the winner,” said Merz.

An opinion poll for broadcaster ARD conducted on Monday and Tuesday showed Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as mini-Merkel, still favorite among CDU voters with 46 percent support.

The poll, released on Thursday, showed 31 percent of CDU supporters favored Friedrich Merz, returning to politics after 10 years in the private sector. Twelve percent backed Spahn.
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Russia is awaiting a European court ruling on whether it violated the rights of opposition leader Alexei Navalny when arresting him on repeated occasions.

A leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny is to appear at the European Court of Human Rights in the French city of Strasbourg to hear the ruling Thursday, after a last-minute legal problem delayed his arrival.

The court ruled last year that seven of his arrests were unlawful and ordered Russia to pay 63,000 euros ($67,000) in compensation. But the court didn’t rule on Navalny’s arguments that the arrests were politically motivated.

The Russian government and Navalny appealed, and the case went to the court’s Grand Chamber, which issues its final, binding ruling later Thursday.

Article 18

Navalny, arguably Russia’s most popular opposition figure, has faced fraud charges widely viewed as political retribution for investigating corruption and leading major anti-government protests.

Navalny mounted a grass-roots presidential campaign before he was officially barred from running in this year’s election, which Putin overwhelmingly won.

Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova told The Associated Press that the legal team is most concerned with whether the court finds that Russian authorities violated Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, effectively meaning the arrests were politically motivated.

Navalny says that would set an important precedent for activists across Russia who have faced challenges in staging public rallies.

Russia: Arrests justified

The Kremlin routinely dismisses Navalny as a trouble-maker with no political backing. Russia’s representative to the ECHR, deputy justice minister Mikhail Galperin, argued during a hearing earlier this year that Navalny’s arrests were all justified and that his unauthorized rallies put public security at risk. He suggested Navalny staged his arrests to get media attention.

Russia is obliged to carry out the court’s rulings as a member of the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog. However, Russia has delayed implementing past rulings from the court and argued that it is encroaching on Russian judicial sovereignty.

About a third of the court’s cases last year involved Russia, and of 305 judgments concerning Russia in 2017, 293 found at least one rights violation.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May’s already tough task of persuading parliament to approve an agreement on Britain’s exit from the European Union took a hit Thursday as her Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigned.

“I cannot in good conscience support the terms proposed for our deal with the EU,” Raab said as he released a statement outlining his opposition to the agreement he helped negotiate.

Raab specifically objected to a key provision setting up a customs union that would eliminate the need for a hard border between Britain’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland while Britain and the EU work on a new trade deal.

He said not having a firm end date for such an arrangement would leave Britain without democratic control over laws governing its own territory, and would “severely prejudice” the future trade talks.

The British pound dropped sharply in value against the U.S. dollar after Raab’s resignation.

Speaking Thursday in parliament, opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn called the draft agreement a “huge and damaging failure.”

He said of Raab’s resignation, “What faith does that give anyone else in this place or in this country?”

​May defends deal

May defended the deal, telling lawmakers it would mean Britain would leave the European Union “in a smooth and orderly way.”

“It takes back control of our borders, law and money, it protects jobs, security and the integrity of the United Kingdom, and it delivers in ways that many said simply could not be done,” she said.

May must convince a majority in parliament to approve the agreement, but even before Raab’s resignation there were many critics, in both the camp that favors Britain leaving the EU and among those who would rather Britain remain a member.

She told parliament Thursday that failing to support the deal would only bring more uncertainty and division.

“Voting against the deal will bring us all back to square one,” she said.

May’s negotiation team has sought to keep Britain as close as possible to the EU when it leaves.  The pro-Brexit side wants a cleaner break that would give Britain more autonomy over its policies, particularly regarding trade.

Pro-EU lawmakers say the agreement puts Britain in a worse situation than existing policies.

Annmarie Elijah, associate director for the Centre for European Studies at the Australian National University, told VOA the chance of parliamentary approval “does not look promising,” and that the difficulties in the Brexit negotiations go all the way back to the 2016 referendum that set the process in motion.

“When the vote actually took place there was very little detail put around what in fact Brexit would look like,” Elijah said.  “And I think we’re now all paying the price for that in the sense that it is very difficult to know exactly how you can unwind more than 40 years of economic integration across so many public policy sectors and do that in an orderly way.”

​EU meeting Nov. 25

On the European Union side, there is much less drama in the proceedings.

European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday that EU leaders would meet November 25 to finalize the Brexit deal.

He made the announcement after talks with EU Brexit chief negotiator Michel Barnier, and Tusk and praised what he said was a deal that limits the damage of Britain leaving the European Union while securing the interests of the remaining member states.

“Since the very beginning, we have had no doubt that Brexit is a lose-lose situation, and that our negotiations are only about damage control,” Tusk said.

He laid out a basic timeline of how the European Union will progress toward the November 25 meeting, with EU ambassadors gathering in the coming days to assess the agreement and their government’s back home evaluating it next week.

Painless as possible

Tusk said the summit to formalize the deal will go forward “if nothing extraordinary happens.”

“Let me say this to our British friends.  As much as I am sad to see you leave, I will do everything to make this farewell the least painful possible, both for you and for us,” he said.

The uncertainty on the British side leaves several options for how the situation will play out in the coming months.  If Britain’s parliament and EU members agree, then the terms negotiated by the two sides will govern their relations going forward.

If the agreement fails the votes, there could be a so-called “No-deal Brexit,” a potentially chaotic ending that would bring divorce without terms on matters such as trade and immigration.

Other outcomes could oust May as prime minister or bring another referendum like the one in 2016.

“When you strip away the detail, the choice before us is clear,” May said after the Cabinet meeting.  “This deal, which delivers on the vote of the referendum, which brings back control of our money, laws and borders; ends free movement; protects jobs, security and our union; or leave with no deal; or no Brexit at all.”
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The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed on a deal that will give London’s vast financial center only a basic level of access to the bloc’s markets after Brexit. 

The agreement will be based on the EU’s existing system of financial market access known as equivalence — a watered-down relationship that officials in Brussels have said all along is the best arrangement that Britain can expect. 

The EU grants equivalence to many countries and has so far not agreed to Britain’s demands for major concessions such as offering broader access and safeguards on withdrawing access, neither of which is mentioned in the draft deal. 

“It is appalling,” said Graham Bishop, a former banker and consultant who has advised EU institutions on financial services. The draft text “is particularly vague but emphasizes the EU’s ability to take decisions in its own interests. … This is code for the UK being a pure rule taker.” 

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has undermined London’s position as the leading international finance hub. Britain’s financial services sector, the biggest source of its exports and tax revenue, has been struggling to find a way to preserve the existing flow of trading after it leaves the EU. 

Many top bankers fear Brexit will slowly undermine London’s position. Global banks have already reorganized some operations ahead of Britain’s departure from the European Union, due on March 29. 

Currently, inside the EU, banks and insurers in Britain enjoy unfettered access to customers across the bloc in all financial activities. 

No commercial bank lending

Equivalence, however, covers a more limited range of business and excludes major activities such as commercial bank lending. Law firm Hogan Lovells has estimated that equivalence rules cover just a quarter of all EU cross-border financial services business. 

Such an arrangement would give Britain a similar level of access to the EU as major U.S. and Japanese firms, while tying it to many EU finance rules for years to come. 

Many bankers and politicians have been hoping London could secure a preferential deal giving it deep access to the bloc’s markets. 

Under current equivalence rules, access is patchy and can be cut off by the EU within 30 days in some cases. Britain had called for a far longer notice period. 

The draft deal is likely to persuade banks, insurers and asset managers to stick with plans to move some activities to the EU to ensure they maintain access to the bloc’s markets. 

Britain is currently home to the world’s largest number of banks, and about 6 trillion euros ($6.79 trillion) or 37 percent of Europe’s financial assets are managed in the U.K. capital, almost twice the amount of its nearest rival, Paris. 

London also dominates Europe’s 5.2 trillion-euro investment banking industry. 

Rachel Kent, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells who has advised companies on future trading relations with the EU, said the draft deal did not rule out improved equivalence in the future. 

“I don’t see that any doors have been closed,” she said. “It is probably as much as we could hope for at this stage.” 
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Britain’s Prince Charles is turning 70 with a family birthday party, and a firm commitment to his environmentalist views.

Charles is due to have tea on Wednesday with a group of people who are also turning 70 this year, before a Buckingham Palace party thrown by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

The prince’s Clarence House office released two family portraits to mark the birthday. The photos by Chris Jackson show Charles with his wife Camilla, sons Prince William and Prince Harry, their wives Kate and Meghan and his grandchildren: 6-year-old Prince George, 3-year-old Princess Charlotte and 6-month-old Prince Louis.

The environmentalist prince writes in the latest edition of Country Life magazine, urging people not to take the natural world for granted but to “think ahead to what our grandchildren will want and need.”
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Britain is to allow citizens from all Commonwealth countries to join its armed forces — even if they have never lived in Britain. The new rules are aimed at tackling a recruitment crisis. But campaigners want clarity over the citizenship rights of the new recruits after they leave the services.

Touring Africa earlier this month, Prince Charles paid tribute to soldiers of the former Empire who fought for Britain.

Out of the empire came the Commonwealth — and it is from those countries that Britain is now looking to recruit.

The government says all roles and ranks will be open to citizens from all Commonwealth countries who are aged 18 or over. It’s aimed at plugging a gap in recruitment — with a shortfall in armed forces personnel estimated at over 8,000, says Paul Barnes, visiting fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

“It seems that they are not coming forward in the numbers that they used to. And with the gap opening in manning, we need to find a rapid fill. And that rapid fill is often best found from the Commonwealth,” he said.

Previously most Commonwealth recruits had to have lived in Britain for at least five years. That has now been dropped — and the armed forces hope to recruit an extra 1,350 people every year through the scheme. Barnes says they will bring added value.

“Commonwealth soldiers will come with a high level of education, and they will easily fit into those specialist roles that are more difficult. But also you gain a strength in terms of diversity, a strength in terms of diversity of view, in decision-making, in our perspective of the world, our cultural understanding,” he said.

Commonwealth recruits also qualify to become British residents after four years, or citizens after five years’ service  — a major pull factor for signing up.

Doctor Hugh Milroy is CEO of Veterans Aid — which has supported dozens of former Commonwealth soldiers who struggled to gain citizenship.

“Under the old system, and I really do hope this has been picked up, you had no access to benefits, and you had no right to work. So in fact for many years, we were stopping people starving,”  he said. “My advice to anyone coming here to join the armed forces is, this is almost the first thing you want to deal with as soon as you arrive here and join the armed forces. Don’t wait till the end, because it takes so long to do.”

The British Ministry of Defense told VOA that citizenship requirements had not changed — and new Commonwealth recruits would have to meet the same criteria as before.

 
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Britain is to allow citizens from all Commonwealth countries to join its armed forces – even if they have never lived in Britain. The new rules are aimed at tackling a recruitment crisis. But as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, activists want clarity over the citizenship rights of the new recruits after they leave the services.
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The European Union’s highest court has ruled that the taste of a food cannot be protected by copyright.

The European Court of Justice said Tuesday “the taste of a food product cannot be identified with precision of objectivity,” thus making it ineligible “for copyright protection.”

Dutch cheese maker Levola had argued that a rival company copied its herbed spread called Heksenkaas or witches’ cheese. The company claimed Heksenkaas was a work protected by copyright and asked the Dutch courts to insist that the rival firm cease production and sale of its cheese.

But the judges ruled that unlike books, movies, songs and the like, the taste of food depends on personal preferences and the context in which the food is consumed, “which are subjective and variable.”

“Accordingly, the court concludes that the taste of a food product cannot be classified as a ‘work,’ and consequently is not eligible for copyright protection under the directive,” the judges said.

This is not the first time the European Court of Justice had to settle disputes about food.

In July, it ruled Nestle could not trademark the four-finger shape of its KitKat chocolate bars.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Tuesday for an integrated European Union military, echoing language used by French President Emmanuel Macron last week that infuriated U.S. President Donald Trump.

Merkel told the European Parliament such an army would not undermine the U.S.-led military alliance NATO but would be complementary to it, remarks that were met with loud applause in the legislature though also with boos from nationalist members.

“The times when we could rely on others are over. This means we Europeans have to take our fate fully into our own hands,” Merkel said. “We should work on a vision of one day establishing a real European army.”

Macron’s call, which reflected a broad trend of EU thinking but is not universally accepted, was meant to show European willingness to meet U.S. demands that Europe do more for its own security and rely less on America’s security umbrella.

However, on Twitter on November 9, Trump accused Macron of seeking to develop the EU’s own military to defend itself from the United States, which EU and French officials said was a misunderstanding.

On Tuesday Trump took aim at Macron again, blasting France over its near-defeat to Germany in two world wars, its wine industry and Macron’s approval ratings.

In his remarks on November 6, Macron had been referring to computer hackers who could attack Europe from anywhere, including from inside the United States, officials said.

First proposed in the 1950s and taken up four years ago by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as a response to fraying EU unity, an EU armed forces is seen as strengthening the global power of the bloc, which is an economic giant but a geopolitical minnow.

With Britain’s pending departure from the EU, there may be more momentum for remaining member states to find common ground on defense, although there remain divisions.

Supporters of a European defense union say the EU has struggled in military and humanitarian missions in the Balkans, Libya and Africa, and that it was caught off guard by Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“No place for nationalism”

Merkel’s address comes at a time when the EU is searching for answers to a U.S. president who views the EU with contempt, to the rise of illiberal democracies and nationalist parties within its borders, and to Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.

She made appeals for tolerance and solidarity, saying “nationalism and egotism should no longer have a place in Europe” to a sustained applause.

As a deadline looms for Italy’s euroskeptic government to re-submit budget plans to the European Union, Merkel said the euro zone would only work if all member states meet their treaty responsibilities.

“Our common currency can only function if every individual member fulfils their responsibility for sustainable finances,” Merkel said, adding that otherwise the strength and the stability of the euro zone were at risk.

“We want to extend a hand to Italy,” she later said. “But Italy also agreed to all sorts of rules and it can’t just tear them up.”

Merkel dominated European politics for over a decade, but she is now a diminished force, weakened by the fragility of her coalition and the rise of the far-right in Germany. She announced in late October that she would step down as leader of her party, though remain chancellor.

Her foot-dragging over far-reaching reforms to the eurozone has frustrated the energetic Macron. In the summer, they agreed to a budget for the single currency area but failed to deliver any big-bang reforms. Few concrete steps have been taken since.

On Tuesday, she kept her vision for deeper monetary cooperation vague: “We need to develop our monetary policy better. We’re working on a banking union,” she said. “We have to look at responsibility and control, a banking union and then later a European insurance system.”

Merkel also trained her sights on Poland and Hungary, two countries whose leaders other member states worry are undercutting democratic institutions.

The European Parliament in September voted to sanction Hungary for flouting EU rules on democracy, civil rights and corruption, while concerns have grown in the EU over Warsaw’s accelerated judicial overhaul.

“Solidarity is always linked to commitments of the community, and the principles based on rule of law,” Merkel said.
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NATO is developing new high-tech tools, such as the ability to 3-D-print parts for weapons and deliver them by drone, as it scrambles to retain a competitive edge over Russia, China and other would-be battlefield adversaries. 

Gen. Andre Lanata, who took over as head of the NATO transformation command in September, told a conference in Berlin that his command demonstrated over 21 “disruptive” projects during military exercises in Norway this month. 

He urged startups as well as traditional arms manufacturers to work with the Atlantic alliance to boost innovation, as rapid and easy access to emerging technologies was helping adversaries narrow NATO’s long-standing advantage. 

Lanata’s command hosted its third “innovation challenge” in tandem with the conference this week, where 10 startups and smaller firms presented ideas for defeating swarms of drones on the ground and in the air. 

Winner from Belgium

Belgian firm ALX Systems, which builds civilian surveillance drones, won this year’s challenge.

Its CEO, Geoffrey Mormal, said small companies like his often struggled with cumbersome weapons procurement processes. 

“It’s a very hot topic, so perhaps it will help to enable quicker decisions,” he told Reuters. 

Lanata said NATO was focused on areas such as artificial intelligence, connectivity, quantum computing, big data and hypervelocity, but also wants to learn from DHL and others how to improve the logistics of moving weapons and troops. 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said increasing military spending by NATO members would help tackle some of the challenges, but efforts were also needed to reduce widespread duplication and fragmentation in the European defense sector. 

Participants also met behind closed doors with chief executives from 12 of the 15 biggest arms makers in Europe. 
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German states have drafted a list of demands aimed at tightening a law that requires social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to remove hate speech from their sites, the Handelblatt newspaper reported Monday.

Justice ministers from the states will submit their proposed revisions to the German law called NetzDG at a meeting with Justice Minister Katarina Barley on Thursday, the newspaper said, saying it had obtained a draft of the document.

The law, which came into full force on Jan. 1, is a highly ambitious effort to control what appears on social media and it has drawn a range of criticism.

While the German states are focused on concerns about how complaints are processed, other officials have called for changes following criticism that too much content was being blocked.

The states’ justice ministers are calling for changes that would make it easier for people who want to complain about banned content such as pro-Nazi ideology to find the required forms on social media platforms.

They also want to fine social media companies up to 500,000 euros ($560,950) for providing “meaningless replies” to queries from law enforcement authorities, the newspaper said.

Till Steffen, the top justice official in Hamburg and a member of the Greens party, told the newspaper that the law had in some cases proven to be “a paper tiger.”

“If we want to effectively limit hate and incitement on the internet, we have to give the law more bite and close the loopholes,” he told the paper. “For instance, it cannot be the case that some platforms hide their complaint forms so that no one can find them.”

Facebook in July said it had deleted hundreds of offensive posts since implementation of the law, which foresees fines of up to 50 million euros ($56.10 million) for failure to comply.
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