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Egypt’s president urged Russia on Tuesday to resume direct flights to Egyptian resorts as he discussed ways to bolster ties with Russian officials and lawmakers.

Moscow suspended the flights after a bomb planted by the Islamic State group brought a Russian passenger plane down over Sinai in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board. 

Flights between Moscow and Cairo resumed in April after Egyptian officials beefed up airport security. Talks about restoring direct air travel to Egypt’s Red Sea resorts have dragged on.

Addressing the Russian parliament’s upper house, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi emphasized that restoring the flights was essential for Egypt’s tourism industry.

Following meetings in Moscow with top Russian lawmakers and Cabinet ministers, el-Sissi met over dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi later in the day.

The two leaders have developed a close personal rapport and sought to expand bilateral ties, which have strengthened considerably over the past few years.

El-Sissi is on his fourth trip to Russia since taking office in 2014, and Putin visited Egypt in 2015 and 2017.

Egypt has signed deals to buy billions of dollars’ worth of Russian weapons, including fighter jets and assault helicopters. When Putin visited Cairo last December, officials signed a deal for Russia to build a nuclear power plant in Dabaa. 

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that the two presidents will discuss the implementation of the nuclear plant contract, as well as prospects for the resumption of flights to the Red Sea resorts and other issues.

He said that el-Sissi will be offered a presentation of Russian weapons, including those which Egypt has expressed interest in buying.

Ushakov noted that bilateral trade rose by 62 percent last year reaching $6.7 billion and continued to expand at a swift pace this year.

Russian grain exports currently account for about 70 percent of Egypt’s needs, he said

Ushakov added that Putin and el-Sissi will discuss international issues, focusing on the situation in Syria, Libya, Yemen and the Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

Following broader talks Wednesday, the two presidents are set to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty that would further boost Russian-Egyptian ties.

                   
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Facebook says that anyone who takes out a British political ad on the social media platform will now be forced to reveal their identity, in a bid to increase transparency and curb misinformation.

The company said Tuesday that it will also require disclaimers for any British political advertisements. All the data on the ad buyers will be archived for seven years in a publicly accessible database.

Facebook is already applying a similar system in the United States, which is holding midterm elections this year.

British lawmakers have called for greater oversight of social media companies and election campaigns to protect democracy in the digital age.

A House of Commons report this year said democracy is facing a crisis because data analysis and social media allow campaigns to target voters with messages of hate without their consent.

“While the vast majority of ads on Facebook are run by legitimate organizations, we know that there are bad actors that try to misuse our platform,” Facebook said in a statement. “By having people verify who they are, we believe it will help prevent abuse.”

Facebook said it’s up against “smart and well-funded adversaries who change their tactics as we spot abuse,” but it believes that increased transparency is good for democracy and the electoral process.

 
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Germany has deported an accomplice of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States to his home country of Morocco.

Mounir al-Motassadeq had spent almost 15 years in prison in Germany before he was deported Monday to Morocco.

German media published photographs of Motassadeq wearing a blindfold and being led by two armed policemen to a helicopter. German officials confirmed he was flown out by plane from Frankfurt airport on Monday evening.

Motassadeq was convicted of helping Mohamed Atta, the alleged pilot of one of the hijacked 9/11 planes, and other suicide pilots to help plot the attacks on New York and Washington. The suicide pilots were part of an al-Qaida cell based in Hamburg, Germany, where Motassadeq also lived.

Motassadeq was found guilty in 2003 of being a member of a terrorist organization and an accessory to the murder of the passengers aboard the four airliners used in the September 11 attacks. His five years of trials in Germany involved multiple appeals, overturned convictions, and reinstated verdicts. In the end, he received the maximum sentence the German court could hand down for the crimes — 15 years in prison.

Motassadeq denied being involved in the 9/11 plot, but admitted to being friends with those who did. He said his actions to send money to the suicide pilots were merely favors for his friends.

Motassadeq was released shortly before completing his 15-year sentence on the condition that he agreed to be deported to Morocco. Germany says it will re-arrest him if he ever returns.
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One of the first steps taken by Spain’s prime minister after assuming office in June was to order the exhumation of the remains of right-wing military dictator Francisco Franco from a mausoleum in the capital’s outskirts, where they have rested since he died in power a half century ago.

“Democracy cannot dignify a dictator,” Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), said in justifying the order.

The decision was hailed by leftists, but critics warned that polarizing struggles between traditional conservatives and a new breed of left-wing populists could end five decades of bipartisan continuity since Franco’s death.

Sanchez maintains a razor-thin edge in parliament’s lower chamber through an alliance with hard-left groups and Catalan nationalists. His priorities, he said in an address to last month’s U.N. General Assembly, include raising social spending, fighting climate change and promoting women’s rights.

Elsewhere in Europe, populism has come to be identified with far-right movements whose rhetoric is often associated with the xenophobia and racism that characterized the fascist movements that brought Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to power.

But today’s Spanish populism, says influential opinion columnist Mario Saavedra, is “leftist” and appears rooted in memories of a 1930’s republic that was overthrown by Franco in a bloody civil war.

The republic established after King Alfonso XIII stepped aside in 1931 captured the imagination of European and American intellectuals such as Ernest Hemingway, who based his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls on his experiences there. It brought together the world’s most fashionable utopian ideologies at the time, including communism and anarchist syndicalism. Democratic socialists occupied its presidency.

Historian Javier Arjona draws parallels between the coalition of leftist parties which maneuvered Sanchez into the prime minister’s seat and the radical “Popular Front” that came to power through a disputed election victory in 1936. Government supporters scoff at the comparison and Sanchez accuses conservatives of appealing to the “extreme right” in a bid to regain power.

Regardless, a leftist brand of republicanism seems to be back in vogue. Its purple colors appear at social protests and adorn the jerseys of some soccer clubs. Catalan nationalists and the far-left United We Can party who prop up Sanchez’s government call for restoring a republic and holding a referendum on the future of the monarchy. Burning pictures of King Felipe has become a ritual at separatist rallies in Catalonia.

United We Can, or Unidos Podemos (UP) in Spanish, is led by Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor who merged a new generation of leftists with remnants of the old communist party. His movement harnessed a wave of social discontent that exploded into mass protests during the recent global recession, in which Spain’s unemployment rate topped 25 percent nationally and reached 50 percent among young people.

Disenchanted working-class supporters of Sanchez’s mainstream PSOE turned to UP, which promised to confront corruption on all sides.  

While Spain has largely recovered from the darkest days of the crash, UP continues to win followers by denouncing abusive business practices such as the eviction of low-income tenants from housing estates when they are bought up by foreign “vulture funds.” It also champions an increase in old-age pensions for Spain’s growing senior population.

In unveiling its budget October 11, the Sanchez government announced an agreement between the PSOE and UP on a package that includes a massive increase in public spending, the expansion of public services, new regulations, and a substantial rise in the minimum wage.

Sanchez has also called for changing Spain’s constitution. His justice minister, Dolores Delgado, an outspoken proponent of women’s rights, has said that it needs to be rewritten to make it more gender neutral.

His vice president, Carmen Calvo, has called for curbing press freedoms to counter what she calls a “high volume of half-truths and lies” by conservative media. She has threatened to take legal action against the conservative, pro-monarchy, pro-Catholic newspaper ABC over its published allegations that Sanchez plagiarized his doctoral thesis.  

Some business leaders say they are worried. John de Zulueta, chairman of the Circulo de Empresarios, the Spanish business association, said tax hikes proposed by Sanchez to cover a rise in social spending could depress the markets at a time when the economy is not fully out of recession. The IMF has also criticized Sanchez’s plans to finance deficit spending.

Government spokespersons defend their actions, saying their plan is adjusted to EU budget requirements.

Conservatives are also trying to block Sanchez from satisfying Catalan separatists by granting pardons to Catalan Vice president Oriol Junqueras and other officials who are in prison awaiting trial for plotting an independence bid.

“We have to find a political rather than a judicial solution to the Catalan crisis,” Sanchez said after recent violent protests in Barcelona.

Political analyst Ramon Peralta, a professor at Complutense University of Madrid, said Sanchez “tries to shield his government by wrapping it in popular causes.”

In his U.N. speech, Sanchez highlighted his feminist agenda, boasting that 60 percent of his cabinet are women and pledging “zero tolerance” of sexual harassment.

Feminist leaders, who see Spain’s traditional culture of machismo as toxic to women’s rights, are strongly backing Sanchez despite a scandal in which the justice minister was caught on tape speaking insultingly about the interior minister’s homosexuality.

Sanchez’ moves have been well received by liberals elsewhere in Europe. In a recent editorial, the British newspaper The Guardian said, “exhuming Franco is a necessary step in the final stages of Spain’s historic journey away from authoritarian violence towards enduring democracy.”

But others, including some of the prime minister’s allies, suggest that steps like the exhumation of Franco will simply fan the flames of the extreme right. Since Sanchez announced plans to open Franco’s crypt, visits to the mountaintop mausoleum have risen by 77 percent.

The visitors have included blue-shirted members of the Falange party, who raise their arms in the fascist salute while singing their battle hymn, “Cara al Sol,” or “Face to the Sun.” A new extreme-right party called VOX has threatened to stage mass protests to block the exhumation.

Spanish public opinion is about evenly split. According to a survey in July by polling institute Sigma Dos, about 41 percent support the decision while 39 percent are opposed. 
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The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy threw the United States into an epoch-defining financial storm. Imagine 300 of them going bust at once.

That, in relative terms, is what Iceland endured a decade ago during its banking crisis, which on this rugged island steeped in myths of gods and giants is now known as “hrunid” – the collapse.

The last in a series of prosecutions of those deemed responsible started this month and the hope is that it will give this country of 330,000 people some closure after years of reckoning and reconstruction. Icelanders have become more cynical about political and business leaders, to the point of drafting a new constitution. The top financial entrepreneurs of a generation have been thrown behind bars and the economy has had to be reinvented more profoundly than most countries affected by the crisis.

“Icelanders experienced the crash as a deep betrayal, not just as a serious economic loss,” says Jon Olafsson, a professor who advises the prime minister on ways to improve trust in the government. “Politicians, businessmen and the media told the public, over and over, that everything was fine and people believed them.”

Everything was not fine. Over the span of one week, 90 percent of the financial sector defaulted.

The collapse of Iceland’s three major commercial banks – which had grown 20-fold over the previous seven years through debt-fueled acquisitions abroad – amounted to the third-largest bankruptcy in modern financial history, according to the Icelandic financial regulator. For the United States, an economy 1,100 times bigger, it would be like if 300 Lehman Brothers defaulted simultaneously, it notes.

An economic depression followed that saw people line up for food aid, an unprecedented sight in this country with a progressive welfare state. Families stockpiled goods from supermarket shelves and thousands emigrated.

Johanna Thorvaldsdottir, a goat farmer, had a mortgage in a foreign currency – a common practice then because of the strength of the local currency and lower interest rates abroad – when the Icelandic krona lost nearly half of its value overnight. The cost of her debt soared.

“I worked every evening, sometimes until midnight,” she says. Had it not been for a crowdfunding campaign, raising $90,000 from donors worldwide, the family estate would have been seized by bank creditors.

“We were lucky,” she says. “Many people were not.”

As big as the shock of the financial crisis was, so was the country’s determination to put things right. It emerged from recession in 2011 as it refocused the economy on tourism and technology, and it has been more aggressive than most countries in going after the culprits of the crisis.

Altogether, 29 men and two women have been sentenced to a combined 99 years of prison, for crimes ranging from insider trading to market manipulation. Six cases are still in the appeals process. By comparison, no top Wall Street executives have been prosecuted in the U.S.

Last week, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the former CEO of Kaupthing Bank, stood trial in the last criminal prosecution related to the financial crisis.

The 48-year old has been sentenced in four prior cases, to a total of seven years in prison. He now stands accused of rigging share prices in his bank two months before it crashed. He denies wrongdoing. While a guilty sentence is unlikely to send him back to prison, as he has already served the maximum time for such crimes, it would help draw a line under the cases, which have dragged on for years.

Sigurdsson began his career at a fish factory in a small town before entering finance, and was during the booming years hailed as a self-made genius.

In some ways, his story reflects that of the country, which in the 1990s embraced the flashy world of finance to attain the wealth that the traditional industries could not provide. The media frequently referred to aggressive entrepreneurs like Sigurdsson as modern-day Vikings raiding foreign shores for acquisitions. In the end, it led to disaster.

Iceland is bent on “learning every lesson from the crisis,” says Iosif Kovras, director of Accountability after Economic Crisis, a research project based in City University-London.

He contrasted Iceland’s approach with that of Ireland, where the crisis was also traumatic but took longer to unfold. The country received a bailout from fellow European nations that took years of reforms to complete.

“It did not prompt the same political urgency,” says Kovras. “Iceland’s apocalyptic crash cleared the way for gathering evidence and data.”

The University of Iceland this month marked the 10-year anniversary of the crash with a symposium hosting over 100 speakers. They ruminated on topics like the crisis’ impact on cardiovascular health, pop-song lyrics, patriarchy and popular protests.

“There is no formula for restoring a peaceful, democratic society,” former President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said in an evening-long public broadcast reflecting on the events. “Amid the crisis, when the situation was revolution-like, I feared not for the economy but our recovery as a nation.”

Reforms of the financial sector have focused on making it less risky. Already there are those saying the rules should be relaxed to allow for faster growth, as the U.S. did this year. President Donald Trump’s administration eased a 2010 law that had sought to limit risk in the financial sector and protect taxpayers from bailing out banks. Critics including Trump saw it as red tape holding the economy back.

Others suggest that loosening the rules would merely increase the likelihood of a new crisis and that Icelanders already seem to be forgetting the lessons of the crash.

Thorhallur Thorhallsson, who works as a tour guide in the capital, notes the proliferation of building cranes rising from the skyline.

“We are so used to cranes occupying the sky that it was decided to make them our national bird,” he tells a half dozen tourists gathered by the statue of the Norse explorer who is said to have settled the island 1,100 years ago.

“In fact, today, Reykjavik has more building cranes than before the 2008 crash.”
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Days ahead of a summit once seen as the moment Britain and the European Union would have to reach a Brexit deal, both sides are still staring at each other over the question of the Irish border, refusing to blink.

A flurry of diplomatic meetings over the weekend had raised hopes for an agreement, only to be disappointed by the issue that has dogged the talks for months — how to ensure no hard border is created between the EU’s Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland once Brexit happens on March 29.

The EU has proposed keeping Northern Ireland in a customs union to avoid a hard border between it and Ireland. The fear is that such a border could revive tensions between Northern Ireland’s pro-Irish Catholic and pro-U.K. Protestant communities, in which over 3,700 people died over 30 years of “troubles” ending in 1998.

Britain says it will only accept that plan if it is temporary and does not hive Northern Ireland off permanently from the rest of the U.K. in terms of customs arrangements.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman James Slack said Monday that negotiations are stuck because the EU “continues to insist on the possibility of a customs border down the Irish Sea,” a move it feels will effectively split up the U.K., which is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The acrimony means it is almost impossible that EU leaders will reach a deal at their summit, which begins Wednesday and had long been pegged as the date an agreement should be reached by. The British and EU parliaments need to approve any deal, a process that could take months ahead of the official exit in March.

“Whether we do this week or not, who knows?” British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told reporters in Luxembourg where EU foreign ministers are meeting.

If Britain leaves the EU without an agreement on future relations, there could be chaos — tariffs would go up on trade, airlines could no longer have permits to fly between the two sides, and freight could be lined up for miles at the borders as customs checks are restored overnight.

To avoid this, the prospect of an extra meeting in November was raised, but only if there was decisive progress this week.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney admitted to being “frustrated” by the delay, saying that apart from Britain, Ireland is the country with most to lose from Brexit.

Coveney suggested that May is reneging on part of its commitment to ensure that no hard border involving lengthy customs checks and controls emerges on the Irish island.

He said Britain agreed in December and again in March that an unpopular “backstop” guarantee would remain in place until a better solution is found, but now appears to only want it used for a limited time.

“A backstop cannot be time-limited. That’s new. It hasn’t been there before,” he said. “Nobody wants to ever trigger the backstop, but it needs to be there as an insurance mechanism to calm nerves that we’re not going to see physical border infrastructure re-emerging.”

Britain denied it is reneging on its December commitment to avoid a hard Irish border. “We don’t resile from the commitments we have made in relation to the backstop,” said May’s spokesman, James Slack.

Like Britain’s Hunt, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said of a deal: “it seems that this week it will not be possible, but this week is not the end.”

He said that he foresees no problems between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar.

“It’s not a rock in the way,” Borrell said, referring to the nickname of the British territory bordering Spain. He added that the Irish border problem is “more difficult to solve than Gibraltar.”

Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said: “There is no reason to panic. There is still time.”

May is under intense pressure from her Conservative Party and its parliamentary allies not to give any more ground in negotiations, especially on the border issue.

May’s political allies, the Democratic Unionist Party, stand ready to scuttle a Brexit deal over the Irish border issue. The party opposes any border customs checks but EU officials say that may be the only way to avoid a hard border.

DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said “it is probably inevitable that we will end up with a no-deal scenario” because there was no agreement that would be accepted by Britain’s Parliament.

In Luxembourg, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he hopes “that in the end good sense will win the upper hand.”

“Time is really pressing now,” Maas warned.
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A Moroccan man convicted of helping Mohamed Atta and the other Hamburg-based Sept. 11 suicide pilots as they plotted their attacks on New York and Washington was deported Monday from Germany to his native country.

Mounir el-Motassadeq, who was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the 2001 attacks, was flown by helicopter from a Hamburg prison on Monday morning.

Blindfolded and with his hands and ankles shackled, the 44-year-old was then led by two police officers to another helicopter while other heavily armed police in balaclavas patrolled the area and watched from rooftops.

Authorities wouldn’t comment on the operation for security reasons.

“Mr. Motassadeq will leave the country soon,” Hamburg Interior Ministry spokesman Frank Reschreiter told The Associated Press. “All the necessary procedural steps for this have been ticked off according to plan.”

El-Motassadeq was released shortly before completing his 15-year-sentence on the condition that he agree to be deported to Morocco. That would allow Germany to re-arrest him if he ever returned to the country.

It wasn’t immediately clear what awaited him in Morocco.

El-Motassadeq was convicted of being part of the so-called Hamburg cell, including Atta and fellow Sept. 11 pilots Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.

German courts ruled that el-Motassadeq was aware the three planned to hijack and crash planes, even though he might not have known specifics of the plot. They said el-Motassadeq helped “watch the attackers’ backs and conceal them” by helping them keep up the appearance of being regular university students paying tuition and rent and transferring money.

El-Motassadeq acknowledged training at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan, but insisted he knew nothing of his friends’ plans to attack the U.S.

“I swear by God that I did know the attackers were in America,” he shouted in accented German at a sentencing hearing. “I swear by God that I did not know what they wanted to do.”

Originally arrested in Hamburg in November 2001, el- Motassadeq was convicted in 2003 of membership in a terrorist organization and thousands of counts of accessory to murder — taking into account victims on the ground — becoming the first person convicted anywhere on charges related to Sept. 11. He was sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison.

However, a federal court overturned that verdict in 2004, largely because of a lack of evidence from al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody, and sent the case back to Hamburg.

After a 2005 retrial, el-Motassadeq was again convicted of membership in a terrorist organization that included Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah. But he was acquitted of being an accessory to murder after the court ruled it didn’t have enough evidence that he knew of the hijackers’ plot.

El-Motassadeq was sentenced to seven years in prison at the time, but was freed in early 2006 until his appeal could be heard.

Later that year, the federal court reversed the Hamburg court’s acquittal of el-Motassadeq on the accessory to murder charges, ruling that the evidence knew the plotters planned to hijack and crash planes. It limited the number of counts, however, to the 246 people killed aboard the airplanes and the 15-year sentence was restored.

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative allies lost their absolute majority in Bavaria’s state parliament by a wide margin Sunday, according to projections from a regional election that could cause more turbulence in the national government.

The Christian Social Union was on course to take just over 35 percent of the vote, down from 47.7 percent five years ago, projections for ARD and ZDF public television based on exit polls and a partial vote count indicated.

That would be the socially conservative party’s worst performance in Bavaria, which it has traditionally dominated, since 1950. Squabbling in Merkel’s national government and a power struggle at home have weighed in recent months on the CSU, which has taken a hard line on migration tradition.

There were gains for parties to its left and right. The Greens were expected to win up to 19 percent to secure second place, more than double their support in 2013. And the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, was set to enter the state legislature with around 11 percent of the vote.

The center-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s other coalition partner in Berlin, were on course for a disastrous result of 10 percent or less, half of what the party received in 2013 and its worst in the state since World War II.

The CSU has held an absolute majority in the Bavarian parliament for all but five of the past 56 years and governed the prosperous southeastern state for 61 years.

Needing coalition partners to govern would in itself be a major setback for the party, which only exists in Bavaria and has long leveraged its strength there to punch above its weight in national politics.

“Of course this isn’t an easy day for the CSU,” the state’s governor, Markus Soeder, told supporters in Munich, adding that the party accepted the “painful” result “with humility.”

Soeder pointed to goings-on in Berlin and said “it’s not so easy to uncouple yourself from the national trend completely.”

But he stressed that the CSU still emerged Sunday as the state’s strongest party and a mandate to form the next Bavarian government.

He said his preference was for a center-right coalition — which would see the CSU partner with the Free Voters, a local center-right party that was seen winning 11.5 percent, and possibly also the Free Democrats, who may or may not secure the 5 percent needed to win state parliament seats.

The Greens, traditionally bitter opponents, with a more liberal approach to migration and an emphasis on environmental issues, are another possibility.

Bavaria is home to some 13 million of Germany’s 82 million people.

In Berlin, the CSU is one of three parties in Merkel’s federal coalition government along with its conservative sister, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, and the Social Democrats.

That government has been notable largely for internal squabbling since it took office in March. The CSU leader, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, has often played a starring role.

Back in Bavaria, a long-running CSU power struggle saw the 69-year-old Seehofer give up his job as state governor earlier this year to Soeder, a younger and sometimes bitter rival.

Seehofer has sparred with Merkel about migration on and off since 2015, when he assailed her decision to leave Germany’s borders open as refugees and others crossed the Balkans.

They argued in June over whether to turn back small numbers of asylum-seekers at the German-Austrian border, briefly threatening to bring down the national government.

Seehofer also starred in a coalition crisis last month over Germany’s domestic intelligence chief, who was accused of downplaying recent far-right violence against migrants.

Seehofer, who has faced widespread speculation lately that a poor Bavarian result would cost him his job, said he was “saddened” by Sunday’s outcome, but didn’t address his own future.

It remains to be seen whether and how the Bavarian result will affect the national government’s stability or Merkel’s long-term future.

Any aftershocks may be delayed, because another state election is coming Oct. 28 in neighboring Hesse, where conservative Volker Bouffier is defending the 19-year hold of Merkel’s CDU on the governor’s office. Bouffier has criticized the CSU for diminishing people’s trust in Germany’s conservatives.

“Clearly the choices of subjects and the debates of recent weeks led to our friends in the CSU being unable to put their successful regional record at the center of their election campaign,” said the CDU’s general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

 
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Britain’s former Brexit secretary is urging members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet to rebel against her proposed deal with the European Union over the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc.

David Davis wrote in the Sunday Times that May’s plans for some continued ties with the EU under her Chequers plan is “completely unacceptable” and must be stopped. The fellow Conservative Party member said the time has come for ministers to shoot down May’s plan.

“It is time for the cabinet to exert their collective authority,” he said. “This week the authority of our constitution is on the line.”

May is struggling to build a consensus behind her Brexit plans ahead of a cabinet meeting Tuesday that will be followed by an EU summit Wednesday in Brussels.

If Davis’ call for a rebellion is effective, the cabinet meeting Tuesday would be a likely place for opposition to surface.

Davis and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resigned from the cabinet this summer to protest May’s Brexit blueprint. Both have become vocal opponents of her plan, calling it a betrayal of the Brexit vote that would leave Britain in a weakened position.

May also faces obstacles from the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, which has played a crucial role in propping up her minority government in Parliament.

DUP leader Arlene Foster remains opposed to any Brexit plan that would require checks on goods traveling between Northern Ireland and Britain, as some EU leaders have suggested as part of a “backstop” plan.

The Chequers plan has also been questioned by some opposition Labour Party lawmakers, further complicating the prime minister’s hopes of winning parliamentary backing for any Brexit deal she reaches with EU officials.
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Saudi Arabia has rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to punish it over the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying Sunday it would retaliate with “greater” economic actions of its own if Trump were to sanction Riyadh.

The Saudi stock market plunged seven percent before recovering to a five percent loss for the day after Trump told CBS there would be “severe punishment” if it is determined, as Turkey believes, that Saudi agents killed Khashoggi inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

The Saudis have said the allegation is “baseless,” but have provided no proof that Khashoggi left the diplomatic outpost alive after arriving to pick up documents for his impending marriage.

The official Saudi Press Agency quoted an unnamed government source as saying, “The Kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether by threatening to impose economic sanctions, using political pressures, or repeating false accusations.”

The statement said the Saudi government “also affirms that if it receives any action, it will respond with greater action,” noting that its economy, as the world’s biggest oil exporter, “has an influential and vital role in the global economy.”

Trump, in excerpts released Saturday from an interview to be aired Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes show, warned there would be “severe punishment” for Saudi Arabia if it is determined that Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate. Khashoggi was living in self-imposed exile in the United States and had criticized Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in columns written for The Washington Post.

Trump said “nobody knows yet” what happened inside the consulate, “but we’ll probably be able to find out” if Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder. Trump added the United States “would be very upset and angry if that were the case.”

But Trump, who has frequently boasted about his business ties with the kingdom, suggested during the interview that ending U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia would not be an option, saying, “I don’t want to hurt jobs.”

A key U.S. lawmaker, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, told CNN on Sunday that if Saudi agents “went medieval” on Khashoggi, “that would be an outrage.”

He said any response to Khashoggi’s killing “needs to be strong, not symbolic,” including the possibility of cutting off U.S. weapons sales to Riyadh, or it would undermine the U.S.’s moral standing in the world.

In protest of Khashoggi’s disappearance, several U.S. businesses leaders have pulled out of next week’s Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” after the annual meeting of world economic interests in Switzerland. Rubio said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin should also withdraw, but White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the Treasury chief is still planning to go.

Media reports say Khashoggi may have recorded his own death on his Apple Watch.

Accounts say Khashoggi turned on the sound recording capability on his device as he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

The watch is reported to have been connected to the iCloud and the cell phone that he left with his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, before he entered the consulate. Cengiz said she waited for Khashoggi to come out of the consulate, but he never left.

The reports say the watch recorded not only Khashoggi’s interrogation and torture, but also his murder.

The Washington Post reported in recent days that the Turkish government informed U.S. officials it was in possession of video recordings that prove Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate, but have not made them public.

Saudi officials have denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance and said he departed the consulate shortly after entering. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Abdel Aziz bin Saud bin Nayef has called the reports the government ordered Khashoggi killed “lies and baseless allegations.”

A group of 15 Saudi men is reported to have flown into Istanbul the day that Khashoggi went to the consulate. Media reports say the men were in the consulate when Khashoggi was there. The men stayed at the consulate for a few hours and then took flights back to Saudi Arabia.

One of the members of the group, according to CNN, has been identified by Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency and the Sabah newspaper as Salah Muhammed al-Tubaiqi, whom the media outlets say is listed on an official Saudi health website as the head of the forensic medicine department at the Interior Ministry.

 
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Climate change is usually thought to bring hotter weather, but scientists say it can also make some places colder. Temperature changes mean some plants and animals struggle to survive, while others seek new territory. That may be the case for one species of barracuda that is living in colder waters than it normally would. A school of them have settled near an island off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea. VOA’s Deborah Block has the story.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian allies are heading for their worst state election result in more than 60 years in a regional vote Sunday that is likely to increase tensions within Germany’s fragile coalition government.

According to the latest polls, the Christian Social Union (CSU) will win about 34 percent, losing the absolute majority with which the center-right party has controlled its southeastern heartland for most of the postwar period.

Voting stations open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and broadcasters are expected to publish exit polls shortly after 6 p.m. (1600 GMT).

Who wins, loses

One of the biggest winners are likely to be the ecologist, pro-immigration Greens who are projected to more than double their vote share to up to 19 percent and overtake the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) as the second-strongest party.

The regional protest party Free Voters and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party are both forecast to win roughly 10 percent of the votes.

This could complicate CSU State Premier Markus Soeder’s efforts to form a stable coalition government in Bavaria.

The splintered electoral result could force Soeder, who has ruled out a coalition with the AfD, into an awkward alliance with the left-of-center Greens.

Scaring away voters

Horst Seehofer, CSU party leader and interior minister in Merkel’s federal government, could face calls to give up at least one of his posts following the Bavarian election as his hard-line rhetoric against asylum seekers is likely to scare away voters.

“We’ve lost trust because of the CSU,” Volker Bouffier, deputy party leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. He accused Seehofer of damaging the image of the CDU/CSU conservative alliance.

Bouffier is premier in the state of Hesse where another regional election will be held later this month.

Seehofer has been among Merkel’s fiercest critics following her decision in 2015 to welcome more than 1 million migrants. He has gradually shifted the CSU, the sister party to the CDU, to the right to counter the rise of the AfD party.

Divisions between the conservative allies have widened further since March, when an inconclusive national election forced them into a coalition with the left-leaning SPD.

Merkel’s fourth and probably final government has come close to collapsing twice, in arguments over immigration and a scandal over Germany’s former domestic spymaster. The parties are also at odds over how to phase out polluting diesel cars and whether to grant tax cuts for the rich.
…

The head of the Democratic Unionist Party, the Northern Irish party that props up British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, is “ready” to trigger a no-deal Brexit and now regards it as the “likeliest” outcome, The Observer reported Saturday, citing a leaked email.

The newspaper said Arlene Foster told Ashley Fox, leader of Conservative Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), she had a “hostile and difficult” exchange at her meeting this week with Michel Barnier, the French official leading the European Union’s negotiating team.

“AF said the DUP were ready for a no-deal scenario, which she now believed was the likeliest one,” according to the email, whose sender or recipient the newspaper did not identify.

The Observer said it was one of several emails “leaked from the highest levels of government” that it had seen.

A DUP spokesman declined to comment beyond what Foster wrote for an article published in Saturday’s Belfast Telegraph. In it, Foster said she would prefer no Brexit deal to a bad deal, describing current plans as amounting to “the annexation of Northern Ireland” by the EU.

British and European Union negotiators this month accelerated the push for a Brexit deal, but talks remain snagged over the issue of the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and the Irish Republic, an EU member state.

Without a comprehensive EU-UK trade partnership after Brexit, the EU is seeking a “backstop” arrangement whereby Northern Ireland would effectively remain subject to the bloc’s regulations to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

But the DUP, whose support May needs to pass legislation in the British Parliament, vehemently opposes any proposals that treat the province differently from the rest of the UK.

“I fully appreciate the risks of a ‘no deal’ [Brexit] but the dangers of a bad deal are worse,” Foster wrote in the Telegraph article.

“This backstop arrangement would not be temporary. It would be the permanent annexation of Northern Ireland away from the rest of the United Kingdom and forever leave us subject to rules made in a place where we have no say,” she added.

‘No game’

Britain wants any “backstop” arrangement to be time-limited. Hard-line supporters of Brexit in May’s ruling Conservative Party fear it could be used to indefinitely keep the entire UK inside a customs union with the EU.

The EU is opposed to any specific cutoff date.

Foster said her party, which has 10 lawmakers in the UK Parliament, was not bluffing in its tough stance.

“This is no game. Anyone engaging in this in a lighthearted way foolishly fails to grasp the gravity of the decisions we will make in the coming weeks,” Foster said. “The coming days, weeks and months will be critical. The decisions taken will shape the type of Northern Ireland that our grandchildren will live in.”

Foster said she wanted a workable deal for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and would travel to Dublin for talks on Monday.

In an article in another Northern Ireland newspaper, the Belfast News Letter, former British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson also took aim at the backstop, describing May’s agreement to accept it as a “dreadful mistake.”

“The only way to put things back on the right track is to ditch the backstop,” Johnson wrote.
…

A car carrying migrants collided with a truck in northern Greece Saturday, killing 11 people, police said.

Ten of the victims were believed to be migrants who crossed into the Greece from Turkey. The 11th person was the driver and a suspected migrant smuggler, police said. 

Police said the car in which the migrants were packed had another vehicle’s license plates and is suspected of having been used for migrant trafficking. The car had not stopped at a police checkpoint during its journey, but it wasn’t immediately clear how close to the site of the crash that it happened.

Increase in migrants

Police said the crash occurred just after 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) near the town of Kavala. The car, which had been heading to the main northern city of Thessaloniki, collided with a truck heading in the opposite direction and burst into flames. All of the victims have been burned beyond recognition. The truck caught fire as well. 

All those in the car were killed. The truck driver, a 39-year-old Greek man, was treated for minor injuries in a hospital in northern Greece before being discharged.

Greek authorities have been seeing an increase in people illegally crossing the Greek-Turkish border in recent months. Many are transported to Thessaloniki, where they head to police stations to be registered and apply for asylum.

Spanish rescues

Elsewhere, Spain’s maritime rescue service says it recovered the bodies of three migrants and feared that another 17 were missing in the Mediterranean Sea. 

The service says that its rescue craft found the three bodies in waters near a sinking boat it intercepted east of the Strait of Gibraltar. Rescuers saved 36 men of sub-Saharan origin from the boat. The saved migrants said that another 17 men who had traveled with them were missing. 

In total, the service pulled 509 migrants from 15 small boats Friday. 

The United Nations says that 337 of the total of 1,783 migrants who have died trying to reach Europe by sea in 2018 perished in waters near Spain.

 
…

Russia’s top diplomat on Friday called the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s decision to recognize the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s independence from Moscow a Washington-backed “provocation,” from which he vowed to protect “the faithful” in Ukraine if the schism sparks violence.

On Thursday, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based head of global Orthodox Christianity, recognized Ukrainian churches as independent from the Russian Orthodox Church, ending the Moscow Patriarchy’s 332-year oversight of Ukrainian parishes.

The move has immediately restored Ecumenical Patriarchate jurisdiction over all Orthodox faithful in Ukraine, granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church the right to autocephaly — the ecclesiastical term for self-governance. Under this decree, leaders of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian community will be able to form an independently administrated Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Calling the decision “a provocation by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, undertaken with direct public support from Washington,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the move as part of a conspiracy in violation of internationally recognized laws.

“Interfering in church life is forbidden by law in Ukraine, in Russia, and, I hope, in any normal state,” he said, according to a transcript of a press conference posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website.

The decision, which has sparked celebration in Kyiv and outrage in Moscow, is a victory in Ukraine’s struggle to keep Moscow at bay since its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its continued support for separatists fighting against Kyiv in the east, where violence has claimed an estimated 10,000 lives.

Theologian Sergei Chapnin recently wrote in Bloomberg News that “there’s a real danger that the rift could lead to bloodshed, an outcome that all sides must act decisively to prevent.”

Although the Kyiv Patriarchy’s formal break from Moscow has been discussed intermittently since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian aggression since 2014 has widened fissures running throughout Eastern Europe’s Slavic Orthodox community, hastening the split being witnessed this week.

“This step by the Kyiv Patriarchy was expected for a long time, and it is in response to many factors,” said Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, acting director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

“The Ukrainian people are divided. There are millions of Orthodox people who don’t have an alternative to the Moscow Patriarchy … and those people want to belong to an independent church that is free from Russian propaganda, free from collaboration with the Russian regime,” he told VOA, calling the Moscow Patriarchy an ideological instrument of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

“Because the church was intertwined with this aggressive policy of the Russian state, the response to the Russian aggression now includes also response to the ecclesial issue,” he said. “So, the ecclesial issue in Ukraine — the church issue in Ukraine — has become a part of the political and security agenda for the state.”

Even then, he added, the Kyiv Patriarchy’s divorce from Moscow will give the faithful more options in terms of how they choose to practice their faith.

“This move is wise because it corresponds completely to the principle of freedom of consciousness, of freedom of religion,” he said, explaining that all Ukraine-based parishioners will be able to choose which type of Orthodox Church they want to attend — including those guided by tenets of the Russian Orthodox tradition.

“And the [Ukrainian] state really stressed that in the statements by [President Petro Poroshenko] and other political officials, that they will respect that choice of the people and that communities can belong to any jurisdiction they want.”

In September, Patriarch Filaret, head of the Kyiv Patriarchy, told VOA’s Ukrainian Service that the process of unifying Ukraine’s Orthodoxy will guarantee that each parish will be free to determine its future.

“Religious infighting would be a justification for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs,” he said, vowing to avoid bloodshed at all costs. “We want this process to be free of violence. If they don`t want to join a Ukrainian church, they can stay with the Russian church.”

Kyiv’s formal split from Moscow, he added, means that the Russian Orthodox Church will not only lose most of its political and ideological influence over Ukrainian faithful, but also its standing as one of the leaders of global Orthodoxy.

“Currently, Moscow’s Patriarchy together with the Ukrainian church is the biggest Orthodox church in the world,” he told VOA, adding that Constantinople’s recognition of autocephaly cuts the Moscow Patriarchy to half its current size.

“It wouldn’t be able to fight for leadership in the Orthodox Church,” Filaret said, referring to a centuries-long geopolitical competition between Moscow and Constantinople to claim command of Orthodoxy’s quarter-billion followers worldwide.

Although more than two-thirds of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians, Russia is home to the largest number of Orthodox faithful, bolstering its national identity as a bastion of traditional Christian values, an image the Kremlin goes out of its way to project globally.

The next step in Ukraine’s split from Russia is to reunite its various strands of Orthodox faith under the new church, which includes deciding the fate of church buildings and monasteries, some of which are aligned to the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the start of 2018, Ukraine was home to roughly one-third of the Russian church’s parish holdings, according to Kyiv’s official data.

Russia’s past efforts to undermine the Kyiv Patriarchy’s move toward self-rule involved a cyberattack on Bartholomew’s top clergy, according to the Associated Press.

Last month, the State Department endorsed support for Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders’ pursuit of autocephaly, saying it “maintains unwavering support for Ukraine and its territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine and the Russian occupation of Crimea.”

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service. Some information is from AFP and Reuters.
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Paris Saint-Germain striker Kylian Mbappe’s rapid rise to global fame has earned the teenaged World Cup winner an appearance on the cover of Time magazine’s international edition.

Time said Mbappe was a global superstar who “is the future of soccer.”

Mbappe made headlines in September 2017 when he moved from Ligue 1 side Monaco to Paris Saint-Germain for a staggering 180 million euros ($207 million), a deal that saw the then 18-year-old player handed a reported monthly salary of 1.5m euros ($1.8m).

But the 19-year-old’s stock skyrocketed during this year’s World Cup, where a series of phenomenal displays drew compliments from Brazil legend Pele on his way to helping France end their 20-year wait to win another World Cup trophy.

Mbappe became the youngest French goal scorer in World Cup history when he struck in a 1-0 win over Peru in the group stages.

The teenager from the gritty Parisian suburb of Bondy then tore apart Argentina, scoring twice and earning a penalty as Les Blues eliminated the highly-fancied South Americans 4-3 in the last 16 knockout round.

In doing so, Mbappe became only the second teenager, after Pele in 1958, to score two goals in a World Cup match.

When Mbappe scored with a 25-yard strike in the final, a 4-2 win over Croatia, he became only the second teenager to do so, after Pele, in 1958.

With a total of four goals in the tournament, Mbappe received FIFA’s award for Best Young Player of the World Cup.

Arguably better still were the plaudits from Pele himself, who said: “If Kylian keeps on equaling my records, I’m going to have to dust off my boots.”

Mbappe’s teenage days will end when he celebrates his 20th birthday on December 20.

He played a key role for France on Thursday, equalizing from the penalty spot in a 2-2 friendly draw against Iceland.

 
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Britain’s Princess Eugenie wore an elegant voluminous dress by London-based label Peter Pilotto for her wedding to Jack Brooksbank on Friday, with the bride picking a low back to reveal scars she got from surgery as a child.

The 28-year-old granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth walked down the aisle of Windsor Castle’s 15th Century St George’s Chapel in a fitted corset and pleated skirt with a long train designed by Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos, who founded the label in 2007.

“The dress features a neckline that folds around the shoulders to a low back that drapes into a flowing full length train,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement. “The low back feature on the dress was at the specific

request of Princess Eugenie who had surgery aged 12 to correct

scoliosis.”

Eugenie, who announced her engagement in January, worked closely with Pilotto and De Vos for the bespoke dress, with the designers leafing through archives of frocks worn by British royals to pick a silhouette.

Motifs meaningful to the couple were woven into a jacquard of silk, cotton and viscose blend, the palace said. The designs included the thistle and shamrock, the flowers of Scotland and Ireland, and the English rose.

Eugenie borrowed the queen’s Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara, decorated with rose cut diamonds and emeralds and made by jewelers Boucheron in 1919 in the style worn in the Russian Imperial Court.

She wore diamond and emerald drop earrings given to her by

Brooksbank and satin peep-toe heels by Charlotte Olympia.

Speculation over who would design the wedding dress had mounted over the last few weeks, with labels such as Erdem, Ralph & Russo among those mentioned in media reports.

“As soon as we announced the wedding, I knew the designer, and the look, straight away,” she was quoted as saying. “I never thought I’d be the one who knew exactly what I like, but I’ve been pretty on top of it.”

Eugenie, who works in art and Brooksbank, who is European brand manager for Casamigos Tequila, a brand co-founded by Hollywood actor George Clooney, married at the same venue that her cousin Prince Harry and Meghan Markle chose for their nuptials in May.
…

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday it was not clear whether a foiled attack on a Paris-based Iranian opposition group was ordered by the higher echelons of authorities in Tehran.

“As you know Iran is sometimes divided into different factions and tensions, and so I can’t say today whether the order came from the top or from this [security] service or that division,” he told France 24 television in an interview.

France’s foreign ministry said on Oct. 2 there was no doubt the Iranian intelligence ministry was behind the June plot and froze assets belonging to Tehran’s intelligence services and two Iranian nationals.

The plot targeted a meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) outside Paris. U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and several former European and Arab ministers attended the rally.

Belgium charged an Iranian diplomat and three other individuals on Oct. 10 with planning to bomb the meeting.

Two of the suspects were intercepted by Belgian police.

One senior French official told Reuters the plot is likely to have been hatched by hardliners looking to undermine President Hassan Rouhani, who has tried to improve Iran’s relations with the outside world.

Macron said he was still awaiting explanations, but that Rouhani had not given him any during two exchanges he had with the Iranian president.

The hardening of relations between Paris and Tehran could have far-reaching consequences for Rouhani’s government, which is looking to European capitals to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal after the United States pulled out and reimposed tough sanctions.

Macron repeated that there should be a more demanding policy toward Iran which needed to include keeping the existing deal, discussing its nuclear work after 2025 when parts of the agreement expire, its ballistic missile program and curtailing its regional influence.

“I’ve never been naive with Iran or thought it would be easy,” Macron said.
…

The American evangelical Christian pastor at the center of a dispute between Ankara and Washington arrived at his home in Turkey on Friday after a Turkish court ruled he could go free, a move that may signal a major step towards mending ties between the allies.

Andrew Brunson arrived at his home in Turkey’s coastal province of Izmir, a Reuters cameraman said, having left the courthouse in a convoy of cars.

He was released after the court sentenced him to three years and 1-1/2 months in prison on terrorism charges, but said he would not serve any further jail time. The pastor has lived in Turkey for more than 20 years and was put in prison two years ago and has been under house arrest since July.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has imposed sanctions on Turkey in an attempt to secure Brunson’s freedom, tweeted: “PASTOR BRUNSON JUST RELEASED. WILL BE HOME SOON!”

Dressed in a black suit, white shirt and red tie, the North Carolina native wept as the decision was announced, witnesses said. Before the judge’s ruling he had told the court: “I am an innocent man. I love Jesus, I love Turkey.”

After the ruling, Brunson’s lawyer told reporters the pastor was likely to leave Turkey. The U.S. military has a plan to fly Brunson back to America on a military aircraft, officials told Reuters.

The diplomatic standoff over Brunson, who had been pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, had accelerated a sell-off in Turkey’s lira currency, worsening a financial crisis.

Brunson had been accused of links to Kurdish militants and supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the cleric blamed by Turkey for a coup attempt in 2016. Brunson denied the accusation and Washington had demanded his immediate release.

Witnesses told the court in the western town of Aliaga that testimonies against the pastor attributed to them were inaccurate.

Brunson’s wife Norine looked on from the visitors’ area.

‘Great Christian’

Brunson’s mother told Reuters she and his father were elated at the news. “We are overjoyed that God has answered the prayers of so many people around the world,” she said.

Trump has scored points with evangelical Christians, a large part of his political base, by focusing on the Brunson case. The release could boost Trump’s ability to encourage such voters to support Republicans in large numbers in Nov. 6 elections, which will determine whether the party keeps control of Congress.

The heavily conservative constituency voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. He has called Brunson a “great Christian”, and Vice President Mike Pence, the White House’s top emissary to evangelicals, had urged Americans to pray for Brunson.

U.S. broadcaster NBC said on Thursday that Washington had done a secret deal with Ankara to secure Brunson’s release. The lira stood at 5.910 to the dollar at 1336 GMT, little changed on the day after firming 3 percent on

Thursday on expectations that Brunson would be freed.

NATO allies

Relations between the two NATO allies are also under strain over U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkey’s plans to buy a Russian missile defence system, and the U.S. jailing of a executive at a Turkish state bank in an Iran sanctions-busting case.

With Brunson’s release, attention may now turn to the fate of a Turkish-U.S. national and former NASA scientist in jail in Turkey on terrorism charges, as well as three local employees of the U.S. consulate who have also been detained.

Washington wants all these people released, while Ankara has demanded the extradition of Gulen. The cleric, who was lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies any role in the attempted coup.

Friday’s decision could be a first step to ease tensions. Further moves which have been discussed include the return to Turkey of bank executive Mehmet Hakan Attila to serve out his sentence, the release of the U.S. consular staff, and agreement that the U.S. Treasury avoid draconian steps against Halkbank, the state lender.

 
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Russian laws passed since President Vladimir Putin’s 2012 return to the power have dramatically strengthened Kremlin control over the flow of information online and off, according to a new study by a London-based rights group.

The report, issued by PEN International’s Moscow and St. Petersburg offices, outlines restrictions on free expression since the beginning of Putin’s third term. The report covers legislation that criminalizes criticism of the government, the increasing propagandizing of state-run media, and efforts to target libraries for possessing vaguely defined “extremist materials.”

“Russia’s aggressive assault on free expression is happening on all fronts, with the crackdown affecting not only writers, journalists, civil society actors and artists but all Russians,” said Jennifer Clement, president of PEN International. “This report outlines the ways in which Russia’s voices are being silenced, but also makes suggestions as to how the Russian authorities can uphold their international obligations to safeguard free expression.”

Restricted public access to information and free expression by writers, artists and activists, said Nadezhda Azhgikhina, executive director of PEN-Moscow, has drastically narrowed the space for civic discourse in Russia when compared with the years preceding Putin’s third term.

One reason, she said, is that high-level operatives who enforce the crackdown have been able to silence dissenters with impunity for years.

“The lives of ‘independent journalists’ in Russia are hard, and some have paid the ultimate price,” she said. “We remember our fearless colleague and friend Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in the lobby of her apartment block in central Moscow. Although she was assassinated 12 years ago almost to the day, the masterminds behind her killing have yet to be brought to justice. Impunity emboldens perpetrators. It is time to end this vicious circle once and for all.”

Politkovskaya, who covered Russian politics and the second Chechen war for international media outlets, was gunned down by assailants on Oct. 7, 2006. Five men — two former policemen and three Chechens — were convicted in 2014 of her murder.

Chechen assassins have been involved in a string of high-profile slayings of political and media critics of Putin in recent years, including leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in February 2015 near the Kremlin. But in all the cases, rights activists have repeatedly shown, prosecutors have failed to investigate who ordered the contract-style killings.

State officials have maintained their innocence and denied any involvement in the killings.

The PEN report also documents politically motivated incarcerations, citing the May 2014 jailing of prominent Ukrainian writer and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, a vocal opponent to Russia’s annexation of Crimea who was extradited to Russia in violation of international law to face a 20-year sentence on spurious terrorism charges.

The PEN report also portrays artistic and literary freedom under siege, with theater directors such Kirill Serebrennikov subject to prosecution and house arrest.

Authors of the report call on the Russian authorities to amend laws stifling free expression and reviewing anti-extremism laws for unduly broad infringements of the right to freedom of expression.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian service. 
…

Speculation is growing that Turkey could allow American Pastor Andrew Brunson to return to the United States, ending a diplomatic standoff between Ankara and Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump has condemned Brunson’s prosecution on terrorism charges.

Several news organizations reported Thursday that the Trump administration had reached a deal with Turkey, easing some sanctions in exchange for Ankara’s reducing or dropping charges against Brunson.

Washington was expressing cautious optimism about Brunson’s release, which could come as early as Friday. 

“I’m very hopeful that before too long Pastor Brunson, he and his wife, will be able to return to the United States,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday.  Pompeo has reportedly been involved in intense, behind- the-scenes talks with Ankara over the release of Brunson.

On Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters she was not aware of any deal for Brunson’s release. “There’s a legal process that plays out,” she said.

“I’m hopeful that before too long he and his wife will be able to return to the United States. That would be an important step forward for the U.S.-and-Turkey relationship. … But we look forward to watching the case very carefully tomorrow,” Nauert said.

She added that U.S. embassy officials would attend Friday’s hearing in support of Brunson.

Erdogan position

In a sign of Brunson’s possible release, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to distance himself from any decision. “I am the president of the Turkish Republic, a democratic and constitutional state,” he said Tuesday.  “Hence, I must obey whatever the decision the judiciary gives.  All related parties must follow the judicial rulings. That’s it.”

Erdogan has been at the forefront of strong advocacy of Brunson’s prosecution as relations with Washington deteriorated.

The American pastor is facing up to 35 years in jail on terrorism and espionage charges. His next court hearing is scheduled for Friday.  Prosecutors accuse Brunson of supporting followers of the U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Turkey for the 2016 failed coup in Turkey.  Brunson is also accused of aiding the PKK, a banned Kurdish separatist group.

Washington describes the charges as baseless, accusing Ankara of diplomatic hostage-taking. Trump, in August, partly in retaliation for Brunson’s prosecution, slapped Turkey with trade tariffs.  The action triggered a collapse of the Turkish lira.  Erdogan hit back, accusing Washington of waging economic war.

“It’s not only the evangelical base of Donald Trump. A wide range of Americans mostly view Brunson and other American detainees as political hostages,” said political analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.

“Any normalization of relations is out of the question as long as Brunson is detained,” he added. “If Brunson is not allowed to return home after Friday’s hearing, Trump may become impatient and impose more sanctions.”

The threat of further U.S. sanctions against Turkey’s embattled economy is fueling speculation the pastor will be freed.

“Yes, I expect him to be released. There is more and more expectation Turkey will do it,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“With America, I don’t expect relations will get worse,” he added. “On the contrary, there will be durable stability, and in the long run, Turkey-U.S. relations will continue as before. Turkey and America need one another.”

Despite the current crisis in relations, which extends to many other issues, the two NATO allies are continuing to cooperate on Syria.  Ankara recently said that cooperation has improved.

The growing expectation of Brunson’s release Friday, and with it, the removal of further U.S. sanctions, is seen as a reason why the Turkish lira has stabilized after weeks of steep declines.

However, some analysts remain cautious, citing the opaque nature of Turkey’s decision-making process. “There is a significant risk these expectations [Brunson’s release] won’t be met,” said chief economist Inan Demir of Nomura International.  “It’s extremely difficult to gain insight into the thinking of the chief policymakers, so there is room for negative surprises, definitely.”

“I would say it’s a coin flip, 50-50, whether Brunson is released,” analyst Yesilada said.

“I don’t see a clear approach from the ruling AKP camp that he is going to be released. Certainly, there is no unified approach preparing public opinion for his release,” Yesilada added.

Analysts suggest Brunson’s release is complicated by some Erdogan advisers who are warning him about appearing weak in the face of Washington’s pressure.

There are numerous other outstanding issues between the NATO allies. Next month the United States is set to impose severe sanctions on Turkey’s neighbor, Iran, and Washington is lobbying Ankara to comply with the measures.

“Ankara could be looking for a reciprocal gesture by Washington for Brunson’s release,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Washington. Trump has reportedly ruled out any concessions until Brunson is back in the United States. However, analysts point out Trump has so far not imposed any new measures against Turkey.

The Turkish state-owned Halkbank is facing a significant fine that could run into many billions of dollars for violating previous sanctions on Iran.  Analysts suggest the magnitude of the penalty could be linked to Brunson.

Analysts think a significant fine, along with the risk of further investigations and penalties against other Turkish banks, could deal a considerable blow to Turkey’s already-weakened financial system.

“It’s all like a house of cards.  Everything depends on whether Brunson is released,” said Yesilada.  “If he is released, it opens the door to resolving other issues [between Ankara and Washington]. The alternative is an escalation in tensions that could lead to all-out [sanctions] war, like the United States against Iran.”
…

France’s Foreign Ministry says it has summoned Venezuela’s ambassador to France over the “suspicious” death earlier this week of an opposition councilor jailed by Venezuelan intelligence police on allegations he plotted to kill President Nicolas Maduro.

In a statement Thursday, the Quai d’Orsay said Hector Michel Mujica Ricardo was summoned earlier in the day. “France hopes light will be shed on this death through an impartial and independent investigation.”

No more details were provided.

Venezuelan officials say Fernando Alban killed himself by leaping from the 10th floor of the state police agency’s headquarters earlier this week. But opposition leaders reject the official version.

The United Nations has said it will investigate the death.
…

Turkey’s finance tsar has declared war on soaring inflation and called on the country’s businesses to cut prices. 

Finance minister Berat Albayrak Tuesday called on business to cut prices by 10 percent to counter runaway inflation. The Turkish lira has fallen some 40 percent this year, driving up the price of everything from food to fuel and sending inflation to 25 percent last month, its highest in 15 years. 

Analysts warn that this radical strategy could hurt an economy that is already struggling. 

“It’s unusual to announce an anti-inflationary package without a reference to monetary policy,” said senior economist Inan Demir of Nomura International.

Most nations use monetary policy to fight inflation by raising interest rates to cut domestic demand and strengthen the local currency.

“I would say there is a reason, economic theory, and past experience favor monetary policy because measures to control prices have serious side effects,” Demir said.

Since the failed coup in 2016, numerous companies have been seized by Turkish authorities after being accused of conspiring against the government.

‘War on inflation’

In launching his “war on inflation,” the finance minister attacked unnamed companies for “speculation, opportunism and stockpiling.” Police have raided businesses, accused of speculation and shops and supermarkets are now being checked for “price gouging.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is weighing in, calling on consumers to report shops and businesses for excessive price hikes.

Political analyst, Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners, warns the government’s efforts to curtail inflation are more likely to hurt the economy than help it.

“Some people are obviously trying to benefit from the currency turmoil, but a lot of people simply have no idea how to price and cost things. This is why they are simply raising prices by as much as the exchange rate,” Yesilada said. “By trying to stop this kind of behavior, the government is simply making things worse because if people can’t price appropriately, they will stop producing or selling. I understand in some grocery stores, pharmacies and supermarkets there is a shortage of some essential goods.”

International investors 

Last month, the Turkish central bank won back some much need credibility by the international investment community by hiking interest rates by over 6 percent in a move to rein in inflation and defend the currency.

Analysts interpreted the rate hike as an essential step toward returning to economic stability and re-establishing the central bank’s independence.

A key factor cited by international investors for the weakness in the Turkish lira was Erdogan’s hostility toward interest rises and his apparent control over the central bank.

Analysts say the latest measure will likely unnerve investors again. However the Turkish lira only suffered a minimal fall following the controversial policy announcement.

“The most important agenda item for investors is the Pastor Brunson case, and any other news is overshadowed by the hearing Friday, which explains the short-lived sell-off,” said economist Demir.

An American citizen, Pastor Andrew Brunson, is on trial accused of terrorism in Turkey, charges Washington insist are baseless. U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade sanctions imposed on Turkey in August was, in part, retaliation for Ankara’s refusal to release Brunson. The sanctions resulted in the lira falling.

Brunson trial resumes

On Friday, Brunson’s trial resumes with growing expectation that he will be allowed to return to the United States. Such a move would lift the threat of further US sanctions. However, analysts warn about what will happen if Brunson is not released.

“If Brunson is not released, the markets will start to price in further sanctions by the U.S. And, as long as we don’t have much clarity on the U.S. sanctions, the market’s inclination will be to price in the more adverse scenario,” said analyst Demir.
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U.N. human rights experts are calling for a prompt independent and international investigation into the disappearance of Saudi Arabian journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi.  He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, October 2.

Members of the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances say they are deeply concerned over the vanishing of Kashoggi as well as over allegations of his state-sponsored murder.

They say they are disturbed the disappearance of the Saudi journalist may be directly linked to his criticism of his government’s policies in recent years.  They are demanding an immediate international probe into the events surrounding his case.  

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani agrees the apparent enforced disappearance of Khashoggi from the Saudi consulate is of serious concern.

“If reports of his death and the extraordinary circumstances leading up to it are confirmed, this is truly shocking.  We call for cooperation between Turkey and Saudi Arabia to conduct a prompt, impartial and independent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and to make the findings public,” Shamdasani said.  

Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate more than one week ago to get divorce papers so he could marry his Turkish fiancée.  He has not been seen since.  The journalist, a critic of the Saudi monarchy, has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States for more than a year.

His disappearance has unleashed an international firestorm and warnings of serious diplomatic repercussions if the matter is not resolved.  U.S. President Donald Trump, who has a close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed, says he does not like the “bad stories” about this situation.

Turkish media reports allege Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate and his body dismembered.  Crown Prince Mohammed calls the reports about Khashoggi’s disappearance or death completely false and baseless.

U.N. human rights experts say an international probe is needed to learn the truth.  They say the perpetrators and masterminds of this alleged crime should be identified and brought to justice.

 
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The White House said Wednesday that top Trump administration officials have spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the mysterious disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom Turkish officials say they believe was murdered last week inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul.

National security adviser John Bolton and senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, talked with Salman Tuesday, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a follow-up call with the Saudi leader to reiterate the U.S. demand for information about the case, the White House said.

“In both calls they asked for more details and for the Saudi government to be transparent in the investigation process,” the White House said.

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. is continuing to monitor the unfolding investigation in Istanbul, but offered no information what the crown prince told the U.S. officials about Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Trump told reporters he had talked with officials in Saudi Arabia “at the highest level” about Khashoggi’s disappearance, but offered no indication on his whereabouts.

“It’s a very sad situation, this is a bad situation,” Trump said. “It’s a terrible thing.”

“Nobody knows what happened,” Trump said, adding, “We want to get to the bottom of it. We cannot let this happen, to reporters, to anyone.”

Trump declined to say whom he talked with in the Saudi government. He said his aides have been in contact with Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and hope to set up a meeting with her at the White House.

Turkish officials say they believe Khashoggi, a critic of Salman who has been living in self-imposed exile in the U.S., was murdered October 2 inside the consulate when he went there to pick up documents to allow him to marry Cengiz, a Turkish national, or perhaps spirited away to Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has called the allegation “baseless,” but has offered no proof that Khashoggi left the consulate alive, nor has Turkey produced evidence that he was killed inside the diplomatic outpost.

Asked whether Washington might dispatch FBI technicians if Saudi Arabia requested it, Vice President Mike Pence said, “I think the United States of America stands ready to assist in any way.”

Pence did not indicate that either Turkey, which has launched an intensive investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance, or Saudi Arabia has sought U.S. assistance.

He told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt that Khashoggi’s disappearance is “a great concern for the United States of America. The suggestion that this journalist, Mr. Khashoggi, was you know, was murdered should be deeply troubling to everyone that cares as a free and open press around the world…. The free world deserves answers. Violence against journalists should be condemned, but at this point, we don’t know what happened.”

A key U.S. lawmaker, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, told VOA the unfolding drama could significantly affect U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, long an American ally in the Middle East.

“If it turns out that suspicions of Saudi involvement in the murder of this journalist are true,” Kaine said, “it could be a real sea-change in the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that could affect many things, including U.S. support for what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen. So I think we have to get to the bottom of it.”

Turkey has focused much of its investigation on 15 Saudi nationals who arrived in Istanbul on two flights the same day as Khashoggi was at the consulate.

Khashoggi has written articles in The Washington Post that were critical of the Saudi regime and its intervention in the war in Yemen. Cengiz, his fiancee, wrote in the newspaper Tuesday that Khashoggi had been “somewhat concerned that he could be in danger” when he first visited the consulate September 28, but after that visit was uneventful, seemed unconcerned when he returned last week to pick up the documents they needed to get married.

She called on Trump to “help shed light” on the journalist’s disappearance. She also urged Saudi Arabia’s leaders to release security camera video from the consulate area.

Turkish media Wednesday showed what it said was a team of the 15 Saudis arriving at the Istanbul airport on the same day Khashoggi went missing. The Sabah newspaper, which is close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published names and pictures of the Saudi nationals, apparently taken at a passport control station.

Later, eight of the men checked into the Movenpick hotel near the consulate, with seven others checking into a different nearby hotel, the Wyndham. Nearly two hours after Khashoggi entered the consulate, video shows two vehicles with diplomatic plates leaving the consulate through police barricades and headed to the Saudi consul general’s residence. The 15 Saudis left Turkey at four different times, the Sabah report said.

Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan issued the newspaper’s latest plea for information Tuesday, saying neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey has provided satisfactory answers.

“Silence, denials and delays are not acceptable.  We demand to know the truth,” Ryan said in a statement.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday authorities would search the Saudi consulate, but there have been no details about when such a search would take place.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi officials need to prove that Khashoggi left the building.

“We have to get an outcome from this investigation as soon as possible.  The consulate officials cannot save themselves by simply saying, ‘He has left,'” Erdogan said earlier in the week.

Crown Prince Salman said last week that Riyadh was “ready to welcome the Turkish government to go and search our premises,” because it had “nothing to hide” about the missing journalist.

Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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The founder of the British investigative group Bellingcat says Russian President Vladimir Putin lied when he said he had never met either of the two suspects in the novichok poisoning attack in England. Two Russian agents are believed to have traveled to Salisbury in March under assumed names in an attempt to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The fiancee of a Saudi journalist who disappeared after entering the country’s consulate in Istanbul last week said he had been “somewhat concerned that he could be in danger,” but that he did not fear anything would happen to him at the diplomatic outpost.

Hatice Cengiz wrote in the Washington Post that her fiance, Jamal Khashoggi, first went to the consulate on September 28 and returned last week for an appointment to pick up paperwork the couple needed to get married. He has not been seen since.

Cengiz expressed confidence in the ability of Turkish authorities to figure our what happened to Khashoggi, and further called on U.S. President Donald Trump to “help shed light” on the journalist’s disappearance. She also urged Saudi Arabia’s leaders to release security camera video from the consulate area.

Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi left the consulate and rejected accusations from Turkish officials who said he was murdered there. Neither side has shown any proof to support its version of what happened.

Khashoggi has been critical of the Salman government, including in a number of Washington Post columns about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and has been living for a year in self-imposed exile in the United States after a Riyadh crackdown on dissent in the kingdom.

Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan issued the newspaper’s latest plea for information Tuesday, saying neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey has provided satisfactory answers.

“Silence, denials and delays are not acceptable. We demand to know the truth,” Ryan said in a statement.

The pro-government Turkish newspaper Sabah said Wednesday it identified a group of 15 Saudis who allegedly traveled to Istanbul the day Khashoggi went missing, then left Turkey later that day.

Turkish police have been looking into two private aircraft that were believed to be carrying the group when they landed at the Istanbul airport on October 2. Sabah reported that both planes returned to Riyadh, with one stopping first in Dubai and the other in Egypt. The planes belonged to a Saudi company with links to the government.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday authorities would search the Saudi consulate, but there have been no details about when such a search would take place.

WATCH: US response to Khashoggi’s case

​U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he plans to talk to the Saudis about the case, but had no information about Khashoggi’s fate. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi officials need to prove that Khashoggi left the building.

“We have to get an outcome from this investigation as soon as possible. The consulate officials cannot save themselves by simply saying, ‘He has left,'” Erdogan said Monday on a visit to Budapest.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last week that Riyadh was “ready to welcome the Turkish government to go and search our premises,” because it had “nothing to hide” about the missing journalist.
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Bulgarian officials said Wednesday authorities have arrested a suspect in the rape and murder of journalist Viktoria Marinova.

Chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov identified the suspect as Severin Krasimirov, a Bulgarian citizen who was taken into custody in Germany.

Tsatsarov told reporters that so far investigators do not believe Marinova’s rape and killing was linked to her work, but rather was a spontaneous attack.

Krasimirov has been charged with rape and premeditated murder.

Marinova had investigated alleged corruption involving politicians and European Union funds. Her body was found Saturday in a park in the northern city of Ruse.
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