Новини

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the U.S is “not concerned” about the value of the dollar in the short-term.

At a press briefing at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Mnuchin said the short-term value of the dollar is dependent on many factors in what is a very liquid market.

In the longer-term, he said, the U.S. currency’s value will be determined by the underlying strength of the U.S. economy.

On Wednesday, Mnuchin sparked a big dollar sell-off when he said the recent fall in the value of the dollar was “good” for trade. The euro, for example, spiked to a three-year high.

Mnuchin insisted Thursday that his comment on the dollar was “balanced and consistent.”
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A commuter train derailed Thursday in northern Italy, killing at least three people, seriously injuring 10 and trapping others heading into Milan at the start of the work day, officials said.

The Trenord train derailed at a switch track near the Pioltello Limito station on the outskirts of the city, halting train traffic into and out of Italy’s financial capital for hours. At least two main cars from the middle of the train peeled off the rails but were still standing, albeit at an angle. Rescue crews gingerly climbed through the crushed sides of the cars trying to get to trapped passengers.

Prosecutors at the scene said at least three people were killed, 10 were seriously injured and dozens more slightly injured. The train was heading from Cremona, in eastern Lombardy, into Milan’s Garibaldi station and came off the rails at a switch track, suggesting that at least played a role in the derailment, the local prefect said.

Passengers reported feeling the car shake for a few minutes before hearing a big bang, and then feeling the car crush in on them.

Trenord is the regional train company serving the Lombardy region. It is notorious among passengers for dirty, packed cars and frequent delays. On social media Thursday, it was ridiculed for tweets blaming delays into Milan on a “technical inconvenience” involving a train.

It was the latest incident involving Italy’s aging rail system. In 2016, 23 people were killed when two trains collided on a single track in an olive grove in Puglia, southeastern Italy. In 2009, 32 people were killed when a freight train carrying liquefied petroleum gas derailed and exploded in Viareggio, in central Italy’s Tuscany region.
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Donald Trump arrived at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos on Thursday, the first serving U.S. president to attend since Bill Clinton in 2000.

Analysts say many delegates are braced for a clash of competing visions for the global economy.

Trump is expected to push his agenda of “America First,” which has seen the United States put tariffs on some imports and demand the restructuring of global trade deals. Other global powers, including Europe, China and Japan, are urging a renewed commitment to global free trade.

Organizers hope the summit will help reconcile the rival visions.

“We strongly believe in dialogue and I think the fact that the president of the U.S. is here also opens up for a discussion about more equitable globalization,” said Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum.

WATCH: Davos Elite Braced For Trump’s ‘America First’ Agenda

Speech Friday

But it is Trump’s attitude toward globalization, and by extension free trade, that is generating a tangible tension ahead of his speech that will close the summit Friday.

The president signed an order Tuesday imposing steep import tariffs on washing machines and solar panels, repeating his assertion that the current trade system is bad for America.

“These executive actions uphold the principle of fair trade and demonstrate to the world that the United States will not be taken advantage of anymore,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

​Modi sets the stage

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the opening address to the forum. His message contrasted sharply with what will likely be Trump’s.

“Forces of protectionism are raising their heads against globalization. Their intention is not only to avoid globalization themselves but also want to reverse its natural flow,” Modi told delegates Tuesday.

His sentiments were shared by many other leaders at Davos, including America’s European allies and big economies like China and Japan.

Trump’s agenda?

So how will Trump’s “America First” agenda be received?

“It’s almost setting the agenda for a confrontation of some form,” said Inderjeet Parmar, professor of international politics at City University London.

“So, I think there’s going to be some anxiety, because there is a sort of changing character of the international system, or at least changing character of America’s engagement with it. And that’s having a knock-on effect on other states, which are beginning increasingly to see that it’s going to be a bit more competitive in the international order,” Parmar said.

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump warned against the “false song of globalism.” Trump is to arrive in the spiritual heart of that globalism Thursday, with a message many fellow guests may not want to hear.
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Pope Francis denounced “fake news” as evil and urged reporters to rediscover the “dignity of journalism” and search for the truth.

“Spreading fake news can serve to advance specific goals, influence political decisions and serve economic interests, the pope wrote in an annual message released Wednesday in advance of the Roman Catholic Church’s World Communications Day on May 13.

The document was the first released by a pope on the topic and came after months of ongoing debate about the effect of fake news stories on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The pope’s message cited the difficulty people have of differentiating erroneous information from the truth due to their lack of exposure to information outlets that offer different opinions and perspectives.

“Disinformation thus thrives on the absence of healthy confrontation with other sources of information that could effectively challenge prejudices and generate constructive dialogue; instead, it risks turning people into unwilling accomplices in spreading biased and baseless ideas,” the pope wrote.

Francis called on journalists to pursue information that is “truthful and opposed to falsehoods, rhetorical slogans, and sensational headlines.”

The pontiff has had a contentious relationship with the news media, often complaining about what he has considered biased news reporting.

During his recent trip to Chile and Peru, media criticism of him was renewed for having appointed a bishop accused by victims of being participating in a cover-up for Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest. He was then heavily criticized in the Chilean media for accusing the victims of slander.

Francis touted educational efforts to make social media users aware of disinformation, as well as institutional and legal campaigns to expose those who use technology to hide their identities so they can anonymously plant lies to the public.

“None of us can feel exempted from the duty of countering these falsehoods,” he said.

The Catholic Church has been observing World Communications Day since 1967. The release of the pope’s message on January 24, coincides with the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists.
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Russia tightened its so-called “foreign agent” law last month to target overseas media operating in the country. It means the government can require media outlets to state that they are “foreign agents.” They also have to submit to intensive scrutiny of staffing and financing. Voice of America is among the media organizations to receive such a designation. 

Similar legislation was introduced in 2012 against civil society and non-governmental groups that receive any type of foreign financial support.

The human rights group Memorial has long been targeted for its efforts at documenting historical crimes in the Soviet era, as well as modern-day rights abuses. It was founded in the late 1980s by political dissidents, including the late Russian nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov.

Memorial was designated a foreign agent in 2015 — accused of receiving funds from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and the European Commission, among others. The designation has seen a big increase in workload for the group’s legal director, Kirill Koroteev.

“The most significant problem is that we have to spend a great deal of time in court. We have to spend a lot of time defending ourselves, because we are under the tight control of the state. And that means that even the smallest possible fault, the way the state sees it, leads to a fine or a threat to be eliminated,” Koroteev told VOA in a recent interview.

WATCH: Henry Ridgwell’s report from Moscow

For many of those who fall foul of the designation, the law has echoes of Stalin-era denunciations of alleged anti-Soviet spies. Koroteev says even the term foreign agent appears to be copied from those times.

“This particular expression itself, let us say, is undoubtedly borrowed from the “Great Terror” period. Someone could just open any reasonable book on history, or even a dictionary of the Russian language. That is why the parallel is quite evident.”

The organization Levada conducts social research and polling, aiming to gain an insight into Russian public opinion. But it, too, has also been designated a foreign agent and banned from operating during Russia’s upcoming election campaign season.

“Nobody is going to try to find out for themselves what the foreign money was used for — it does not matter. The most important thing is that the label was attached. Then, that makes it seem there is something murky. That label means one works for foreigners, and if he works for foreigners, that means he is against Russia,” says Levada’s Denis Volkov.

Russia’s government says the foreign agent law is aimed at stopping nefarious foreign interference in Russian politics. On the streets of Moscow, few wanted to discuss the topic. Those who did voiced support for the government.

“I stand for everything in the national interest, everything that is for us. That pleases me. Maybe I am a patriot, but I think that we shall survive without all those foreign things,” Moscow resident Larisa told VOA.

In its latest report for 2018, the group Human Rights Watch says the foreign agent law has had a chilling effect: By September 2017, Russia had designated 158 groups as foreign agents, and courts had levied crippling fines for those failing to comply. They estimate that approximately 30 civil society groups have shut down.
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Italy holds national elections on March 4 under a new, complicated electoral system that mixes proportional representation with first-past-the-post balloting.

Unlike the previous electoral system, the new law does not provide any bonus to the first-placed party or coalition.

Pollsters estimate that the winner this time around will need at least 40 percent of the vote, and probably more, to govern.

No party or coalition has taken 40 percent of the vote in an opinion poll for months. Here are some of the more likely scenarios following the vote:

​The president’s government

President Sergio Mattarella is the supreme arbiter of Italian politics and will play a central role if, as polls suggest, the ballot box delivers deadlock. One scenario would see him try to engineer a cross-party deal to create a government with a clearly defined policy program. Such an administration could be led by a technocrat.

The grand coalition

A variation of that scenario would see the mainstream center-right and center-left parties, led respectively by former prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Renzi, agree to forge the sort of “Grosse Koalition” that is taking shape in Germany. This would have a more ambitious remit than the so-called “president’s government.”

Both parties currently rule out such an alliance, but they managed to work together, briefly, after inconclusive 2013 national elections. However, recent polls suggest they will not have enough seats to govern, meaning they would have to try to get other groups onboard, complicating any coalition negotiations.

​Center-right victorious

Berlusconi’s center-right bloc has been inching up in the polls and currently stands at around 37 percent. Berlusconi says he is aiming to win 45 percent, which would enable the alliance to govern alone. His Forza Italia (Go Italy!) and Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League are the two main parties in the alliance. They have agreed that whoever gets more votes will name the prime minister.

Forza Italia has a five-point lead against the League at present and Berlusconi, who is barred from holding public office because of a tax fraud conviction, has yet to say who he would nominate to head the coalition government.

Swift new elections

If no workable government can be created after March 4, some politicians have suggested Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s center-left government should stay in office until new elections are held, as happened in Spain, which went to the polls twice within six months between 2015 and 2016.

Some analysts have suggested that parties might give Gentiloni a limited mandate to re-write the electoral laws again, but it is hard to see consensus forming on this issue any time soon.

5-Star to the fore

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement has backed away from its long-standing refusal to form alliances with other parties and is likely to emerge as Italy’s largest single party, with polls putting it on around 27 percent. It says this means it should get the first nod to try to form an administration and has suggested it would seek a deal based on line-by-line policy items to be carried out, rather than a formal coalition.

The 5-Star is a bitter enemy of both Berlusconi and Renzi, but some analysts have speculated it could forge a coalition with either Salvini’s rightist League, or the leftist Free and Equal group. It is unclear whether either party would have enough seats to make this a feasible option. A three-way tie-up would never happen.
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Officials in Washington say U.S. President Donald Trump will invite French President Emmanuel Macron to pay a state visit to the White House later this year.

This would be the first state visit Trump has hosted since taking office. A state visit, in which one head of state hosts another, is considered the most formal and most prestigious type of diplomatic visit. It indicates friendly relations between two sovereign states.

The Macrons are scheduled to visit the White House in late April. The White House has not confirmed Tuesday’s report that it will be a state visit.

In July last year, the Macrons hosted the Trumps in Paris for a private dinner in the Eiffel Tower and the annual Bastille Day parade. That event was considered a less formal visit than dining at the presidential palace would have been.

Trump and Macron have managed to stay on friendly terms despite disagreeing on some key issues, most notably the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Macron spoke out after Trump was quoted earlier this month using profanity to describe African nations and Haiti. Macron said he was “outraged” by the remarks, calling them inappropriate and counterproductive.
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Polish prosecutors on Tuesday charged three men for allegedly propagating Nazism after hidden camera footage of a group celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday sparked uproar in the country, still grappling with the memory of Nazi occupation.

The footage, filmed in southwestern Poland and aired on news channel TVN24 this weekend, shows a group of men wearing Nazi-inspired uniforms performing Nazi salutes.

Among those caught on camera was a man identified in the report as Mateusz S., the leader of neo-Nazi group Pride and Modernity (DN).

He appears to have been speaking at an event marking 128 years since the birth of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, held on a hill near the southwestern Polish village of Wodzislaw on an undisclosed date.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency on Tuesday arrested him and two other men identified only as Adam B. and Thomas R. for legal reasons.

A search of their residences turned up Nazi paraphernalia, including uniforms, flags and literature along with an illegal firearm.

They face charges of publicly propagating Nazism for having organized the event which “praised and affirmed this type (Nazi) of government with emblems, recordings and texts as well as other gestures referring to Nazi symbolism,” Ewa Bialik, spokeswoman for the national public prosecutor’s office, told the Polish PAP news agency.

Totalitarian ideologies like fascism or communism and ethnic or racial hatred are banned in Poland, and carry a penalty of up to two years behind bars.

Poland’s deputy justice minister Patryk Jaki on Tuesday asked the national public prosecutor’s office to ban the Pride and Modernity group.

‘No tolerance’

Undercover journalists also filmed large red flags with Nazi swastikas hanging on trees and an altar with a portrait of Hitler.

Participants in the event set fire to a large wooden swastika soaked in flammable liquid that was fixed to a tree as they played a soundtrack of Nazi military marches.

Referring to the neo-Nazi event, Poland’s right-wing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Monday on Twitter that “there is no tolerance for these kinds of behaviors and symbols.”

World War II erupted when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.

Some six million Polish citizens, half of whom were Jewish, perished under the Nazi occupation that lasted until 1945.

In November, leaders of the governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party spoke out against xenophobia after a controversial Independence Day march organized by far-right and nationalist groups that drew 60,000 participants and a chorus of condemnation from around the globe.

While many marchers denied membership of or sympathy for extreme right groups, the event also drew representatives of far-right parties from across Europe.
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The EU’s justice commissioner is working on a proposal that could oblige member states such as Poland, which has clashed with Brussels over reforms to its courts, to pass tests on the independence of their judicial systems before receiving funding.

Vera Jourova said there was agreement within the executive European Commission to work on ideas to encourage strong judiciaries in planning for the new budget from 2021.

“One way could be to insist that independent justice systems are necessary for effective control of the use of EU funds,” she said. “I would like to propose that link.”

Seven-year budget plan

A Commission spokesman said on Monday the work by Jourova was part of broader preparations for a new, seven-year EU budget plan, due to be published in May, and was in line with policy outlines the EU executive has put forward since last year.

The remarks by Jourova, the Commission’s Czech member, come as the EU executive is challenging Poland, a major recipient of Union funds, to amend judicial reforms which Brussels says will hurt democracy and its oversight of EU trading rules.

Facing the prospect of filling a hole left in the budget by Britain’s exit from the EU, and irritated by Poland and other governments in the ex-communist east on a range of issues, some wealthy Western governments have pushed for a clearer link between getting subsidies and abiding by EU standards.

Warning for Poland

The German commissioner in charge of the budget, Guenther Oettinger, warned Poland this month that it could lose some of its 7 billion euros annual funding if it fails to heed Brussels’ complaints about undermining the rule of law.

More broadly, Jourova is also hoping for a review of EU policy on judicial standards in the second half of this year. EU officials say that might, for example, include regular reviews of the performance of national justice systems, along the lines of existing biennial reviews of government economic policies, which are meant to promote “convergence” toward EU-wide goals.

‘Cohesion’ policy

As a former national official handling the regional funding that is a key part of EU efforts to bring poor regions closer to the prosperity of others, Jourova stressed that she saw any new rules applying to all EU funding for all states, not just to so-called “cohesion” policy. She also said it should not be seen as a punitive measure but designed to encourage good practice.

She also said discussion on the proposals could be used to help simplify some of the hurdles to applying for EU funds.

Any Commission proposal seen as too radical by governments risk being killed off by member states. 

 
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German and French lawmakers approved a joint resolution Monday stressing the need for closer cooperation as the two nations mark the 55th anniversary of the signing of the Elysee friendship treaty.

At a special German parliamentary session in Berlin, French National Assembly President Francois de Rugy told lawmakers that multilateralism “is the secret of success of Europe.”

“Strengthening of the cooperation between our two countries is a precondition for strengthening Europe,” he said.

The 1963 Elysee treaty marked the post-World War II reconciliation between France and Germany. In approving the joint Franco-German resolution acknowledging the treaty’s importance, German lawmakers called for a new accord to “deepen” the partnership. 

Later in the day, German lawmakers led by Bundestag speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble participated in a French parliament session in Paris.

Schaeuble said in a speech to French lawmakers at the National Assembly that “the Franco-German cooperation is a success story.” 

“Neither Germany nor France have a future without Europe,” Schaeuble insisted in a speech delivered entirely in French.

German and French lawmakers decided to pass the resolution asking their governments to “adapt the founding principles of the Elysee Treaty” to meet the new challenges of globalization, he said.

Schaeuble listed world migration, “the dangers of international terrorism,” armed conflicts at Europe’s external borders, pressure from authoritarian regimes and separatist aspirations and the evolution of international financial markets as among those challenges. 

French lawmakers then voted 133-12, with two abstentions, to approve the resolution passed by their German counterparts earlier. 
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The global economy and geopolitical tensions are taking a back seat to a more immediate problem at this year’s Davos summit of political and business leaders: heavy snow is burying the venue.

High in the Swiss alps on Monday, on the eve of the opening sessions, many of the roughly 3,000 delegates struggled to reach the ski resort. Part of the main train line into Davos had been buried in snow over the weekend, forcing people onto buses, and helicopters were disrupted by poor visibility.

Some pre-summit meetings were cancelled or delayed as the first waves of delegates waded through snow-blanketed streets with luggage, looking for their hotels, or had to wait for road crews to dig their limousines out of drifts.

Businessmen slipped over on icy patches as snow plows roamed the streets, with the snow returning as fast as the machines could clear it.

World Economic Forum communications chief Adrian Monck said it appeared to be the heaviest snowfall for the four-decades-old summit since 1999-2000, though he described it as more of an inconvenience than a real threat to attendance.

“We know the snow causes inconvenience and it puts a lot of pressure on the city of Davos as a host but so far we have not seen any drop-off in registrations,” Monck said.

With the weather forecast to clear on Tuesday, organizers are hoping transport will start to operate more smoothly and will be running without a hitch by the time U.S. President Donald Trump arrives on Friday to give the closing address.

However, so much snow has built up on the slopes surrounding Davos that avalanches remain a danger.

A bulletin from the SLF Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos showed a broad band of the mountainous country under Level 5 avalanche danger, the highest on a 1-5 scale.

“Fresh snow and snow drift accumulations are prone to triggering (avalanches). Until late in the night a large number of natural avalanches are to be expected,” it said.

Local officials said on Monday they had evacuated two dozen residents from vulnerable areas while crews used explosives to reduce dangerous build-ups on some slopes above the town.

“When Trump comes on Friday it is far from obvious whether he will be able to use a fleet of large helicopters to land in Davos,” said a source close to the organising committee. “Large helicopters increase the risk of avalanches.”
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