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A British man who was exposed to the deadly nerve agent Novichok said he is struggling with his eyesight and mobility, and fears the poison will kill him within a decade.

Charlie Rowley, 45, fell ill in June near Salisbury, England, after coming into contact with the Soviet-developed nerve agent that was used months earlier to attack former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Rowley, Skripal and his daughter survived, but Rowley’s partner Dawn Sturgess, who was also exposed, died in the hospital.

Rowley told the Sunday Mirror newspaper that he was back in the hospital being treated for meningitis. He said he was going blind and unable to use one arm, and said he was “terrified about the future” and what long-term effects the military grade poison would have on him.

“I’m still worried the Novichok could kill me if I get any sort of virus again — it’s on my mind all the time. I’m dreading getting a cold,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be alive in 10 years. It’s been horrendous.”

Britain accuses Russia of carrying out the poisoning of the Skripals, a claim Moscow denies.

Rowley and Sturgess collapsed after they handled a small bottle containing the nerve agent, believed to have been discarded by the Skripals’ attackers.

Britain charged two alleged Russian military intelligence agents in absentia for the attack. The pair denied their involvement on Russian television.

The Skripals’ poisoning ignited a diplomatic confrontation in which hundreds of envoys were expelled by both Russia and Western nations.

 
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French President Emmanuel Macron will address the nation on Monday in response to massive, often violent rallies staged by “yellow-vest” protesters across the country for the past four weekends.

Before the speech Monday evening, Macron plans to meet with union officials, local lawmakers and business leaders for talks on formulating a response to the protests that have rocked the country during the holiday season.

Workers across France Sunday cleaned up the debris from protesters who threw rocks, burned cars and vandalized businesses through the weekend.

Earlier Sunday, France’s foreign minister urged U.S. President Donald Trump not to interfere in French politics, following Trump’s tweets on weeks of protests in Paris in which he said:

“Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The U.S. was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year! ”

An earlier tweet from Trump insinuated that protesters in Paris sided with his decision to leave the Paris agreement — a landmark 2015 agreement between over one hundred countries to combat climate change.

“The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting “We Want Trump!” Love France.” he wrote.

Nearly 2,000 people were arrested Saturday across France in the latest round of “yellow-vest” protests.

Nationwide, the interior ministry says some 136,000 people rallied against France’s high-cost of living. Protesters also expressed their dismay with the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

Protests were held in a number of cities besides Paris, including Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse.

On Saturday, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said violent outbreaks in Paris were “under control” despite ongoing disorderly acts he declared “totally unacceptable.”

France closed the Eiffel Tower and other tourist landmarks and mobilized tens of thousands of security forces for the fourth week of violent demonstrations.

Many shops in Paris were boarded up before Saturday’s protests to avoid being smashed or looted, and police cordoned off many of the city’s broad boulevards.

President Macron made an unannounced visit Friday night to a group of anti-riot security officers outside Paris to thank them for their work.

The protests erupted in November over a fuel tax increase, which was part of Macron’s plan to combat global warming.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe called for new talks Saturday with representatives of the “yellow vest” movement. He vowed the government would address their concerns over rising living costs.

“The president will speak, and will propose measures that will feed this dialogue,” Philippe said in a televised statement.

Since the unrest began in November, four people have been killed in protest-related accidents.

While Macron has since abandoned the fuel tax hike, protesters have made new demands to address other economic issues hurting workers, retirees and students.

Government officials are concerned the repeated weekly violence could weaken the economy and raise doubts about the government’s survival.

The “yellow vest” movement was named after the safety jackets French motorists are required to keep in their vehicles, which the protesters wear at demonstrations.

The weeks of protests have exposed intense resentment among non-city residents who feel that Macron, a former investment banker, is out of touch with struggling middle-class and blue-collar workers.
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Nearly 1,800 people were arrested Saturday across France in the latest round of “yellow vest” protests.

Nationwide, the Interior Ministry says some 136,000 people rallied against France’s high-cost of living. Protesters also expressed their dismay with the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

Protests were mounted in a number of cities besides Paris, including Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse.

The ministry said Sunday 1,723 people were arrested nationwide, with 1,220 of them ordered held in custody.

Parisian police said they made 1,082 arrests Saturday, a sharp increase from last week’s 412 arrests.

Meanwhile, tourist destinations, including the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum, reopened and workers cleaned up broken glass Sunday. 

The man who unleashed the anger, President Emmanuel Macron, broke his silence to tweet his appreciation for the police overnight, but pressure mounted on him to propose new solutions to calm the anger dividing France.

On Saturday, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said violent outbreaks in Paris were “under control” despite ongoing disorderly acts he declared “totally unacceptable.”

French police supported by armored vehicles fired tear gas at yellow-vested protesters on the Champs Elysees.

Castaner estimated 10,000 demonstrators had taken to Parisian streets.

He said 135 people had been injured, including 17 police officers.

France closed the Eiffel Tower and other tourist landmarks and mobilized tens of thousands of security forces for the fourth week of violent demonstrations.

Many shops in Paris were boarded up before Saturday’s protests to avoid being smashed or looted, and police cordoned off many of the city’s broad boulevards.

Despite what Castaner said were “exceptional” security measures, protesters still smashed store windows and clashed with police.

More than 89,000 police were deployed nationwide, an increase from 65,000 last weekend.

Police in central Paris removed any materials from the streets that could be used as weapons or projectiles during the demonstrations, including street furniture at outdoor cafes.

Macron made an unannounced visit Friday night to a group of anti-riot security officers outside Paris to thank them for their work.

The protests erupted in November over a fuel tax increase, which was part of Macron’s plan to combat global warming.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe called for new talks Saturday with representatives of the “yellow vest” movement. He vowed the government would address their concerns over rising living costs.

“The president will speak, and will propose measures that will feed this dialogue,” Philippe said in a televised statement.

WATCH: Clashes and Hundreds Detained in France in ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that the Paris Agreement, a global effort to reduce global warming beginning in 2020, “isn’t working out so well for Paris” and that “People do not want to pay large sums of money … in order to protect the environment.”

Since the unrest began in November, four people have been killed in protest-related accidents.

While Macron has since abandoned the fuel tax hike, protesters have made new demands to address other economic issues hurting workers, retirees and students.

Government officials are concerned the repeated weekly violence could weaken the economy and raise doubts about the government’s survival.

Officials are also concerned about far-right, anarchist and anti-capitalist groups like Black Bloc that have attached themselves to the “yellow vest” movement.
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Corruption costs the world economy $2.6 trillion each year, according to the United Nations, which is marking International Anti-Corruption Day on Sunday.

“Corruption is a serious crime that can undermine social and economic development in all societies. No country, region or community is immune,” the United Nations said.

The cost of $2.6 trillion represents more than 5 percent of global GDP.

The world body said that $1 trillion of the money stolen annually through corruption is in the form of bribes.

Patricia Moreira, the managing director of Transparency International, told VOA that about a quarter of the world’s population has paid a bribe when trying to access a public service over the past year, according to data from the Global Corruption Barometer.

Moreira said it is important to have such a day as International Anti-Corruption Day because it provides “a really tremendous opportunity to focus attention precisely on the challenge that is posed by corruption around the world.”

​Anti-corruption commitments

To mark the day, the United States called on all countries to implement their international anti-corruption commitments including through the U.N. Convention against Corruption.

In a statement Friday, the U.S. State Department said that corruption facilitates crime and terrorism, as well as undermines economic growth, the rule of law and democracy.

“Ultimately, it endangers our national security. That is why, as we look ahead to International Anticorruption Day on Dec. 9, we pledge to continue working with our partners to prevent and combat corruption worldwide,” the statement said.

Moreira said that data about worldwide corruption can make the phenomena understandable but still not necessarily “close to our lives.” For that, we need to hear everyday stories about people impacted by corruption and understand that it “is about our daily lives,” she added.

She said those most impacted by corruption are “the most vulnerable people — so it’s usually women, it’s usually poor people, the most marginalized people in the world.”

The United Nations Development Program notes that in developing countries, funds lost to corruption are estimated at 10 times the amount of official development assistance.

What can be done to fight corruption?

The United Nations designated Dec. 9 as International Anti-Corruption Day in 2003, coinciding with the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption by the U.N. General Assembly.

The purpose of the day is to raise awareness about corruption and put pressure on governments to take action against it.

Tackling the issue

Moreira said to fight corruption effectively it must be tackled from different angles. For example, she said that while it is important to have the right legislation in place to curb corruption, governments must also have mechanisms to enforce that legislation. She said those who engage in corruption must be held accountable.

“Fighting corruption is about providing people with a more sustainable world, with a world where social justice is something more of our reality than what it has been until today,” she said.

Moreira said change must come from a joint effort from governments, public institutions, the private sector and civil society.

The U.S. Statement Department said in its Friday statement that it pledges “to continue working with our partners to prevent and combat corruption worldwide.”

It noted that the United States, through the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development, helps partner nations “build transparent, accountable institutions and strengthen criminal justice systems that hold the corrupt accountable.”

Moreira said that it is important for the world to see that there are results to the fight against corruption.

“Then we are showing the world with specific examples that we can fight against corruption, [that] yes there are results. And if we work together, then it is something not just that we would wish for, but actually something that can be translated into specific results and changes to the world,” she said.

VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff contributed to this report.

 
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Armenians are casting their votes in early parliamentary elections Sunday.

Reformist leader Nikol Pashinian, 43, swept to power in May after weeks of anti-government protests that forced the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, who was also a former president of Armenia.

Sargsyan’s ruling Republican Party, however, blocked Pashinian’s bid to become prime minister, resulting in more protests. The Republican Party then decided to back Pashinian for what it said was the good of the nation.

Pashinian became prime minister, but recently stepped down so parliament could be dissolved for the early election. He remains Armenia’s acting prime minister.

Analysts expect him to be re-instated in office, with his My Step alliance in control of parliament.

Pashinian, a former newspaper editor who had been imprisoned for his activism, has promised to maintain close ties with Russia and fight corruption. He has also pledged to “step up cooperation with the United States and European Union.”
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In France, police clashed with protesters, as tens of thousands of ‘yellow vest’ demonstrators took to the streets Saturday for the fourth consecutive weekend. Reports say at least 135 people have been injured.

French authorities deployed nearly 90,000 police across the country, detained hundreds of people and closed major landmarks and museums out of precaution. Anti-government yellow vest rallies also took place in nearby Belgium and the Netherlands.

It’s becoming a familiar sound — and smell: teargas lobbed by riot police against so-called yellow vest protesters. Demonstrators sporting fluorescent yellow jackets were out in force again in Paris and across the country, protesting against a range of grievances, including low wages and high taxes.

Around the iconic Champs Elysees, demonstrators clashed with police, set fire to barricades and attacked stores. Armored vehicles rumbled through the streets.

Paris area janitor Jonathan Gonzales wore “Resistance Macron” scrawled on his yellow vest — referring to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose popularity has plunged to record lows.

Gonzales said France is one of the world’s richest nations, but the French people are poor because of decades of government mismanagement. He wants higher minimum wage and lower salaries for government leaders.

Other protesters brandished slogans like “Macron resign” … and “Listen to the anger of the people.” Many criticize a raft of tough reforms the government says are needed to make France more competitive. They claim the president only cares about the rich, not the poor.

The yellow vest protests began against a planned fuel tax hike, aimed to help fight climate change. But while the government has since scrapped the increase, the demonstrations continue, by a movement with no clear leadership or demands.

Protester Olivier Goldfarb says people can’t live on what they earn. The working and middle classes pay more taxes than the more affluent.”

Another protester, giving only his first name Hugo, had broader complaints.

“We’re protesting against a system that doesn’t work, but it’s not up to me to say we should do that or we should do that,” said Hugo. “It’s up to the professional politicians. We send a message that it doesn’t work anymore. Now do something, and do it quickly.”

Polls show public support for the yellow vests is still high, despite the violence. Senior citizen Eliane Daubigny and her husband watched the demonstrations unroll early Saturday.

Daubigny said she understood the concerns of protesters who have a hard time making ends meet. But she also knows how people live in Madagascar — and believes the French are pretty spoiled by comparison.

Many stores were shuttered around hot spots like the Champs Elysees. Others were still boarded up from last week’s rioting that cost Paris alone millions of dollars in damage. Restaurants, hotels and stores have lost business during this holiday season.

Meanwhile, thousands of other French joined a very different protest on Saturday — marching in the capital and other cities for more action to fight climate change. In some cases, yellow vests joined the demonstrations.
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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. 
…

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. 
…

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.”
…

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.
…

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.
…

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.”

 
…

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.
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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.” 
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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.
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