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A Mexican microbiologist accused of spying for Russia in Miami is considered a benefactor in his native Oaxaca state, the mayor of his hometown said Wednesday, and he holds positions with at least two prominent universities. Mayor Hazael Matus said scientist Hector Alejandro Cabrera has helped set up science projects in his hometown of El Espinal and had been considered a contender for a Nobel Prize in medicine; Cabrera was known for his work on cardiac treatments and was hoping to produce an ointment to help heal wounds in diabetics in his home state. It is very strange for this to happen because he is a very altruistic person with a lot of social conscience. He helped people and all this seems strange, Matus said. “We don’t know what happened, but I bet it is a confusion or an attack for scientific reasons. He may have discovered something that upset some people or some business interests.” U.S. authorities said Tuesday that Cabrera had been hired by a Russian government official to locate the vehicle of a U.S. government source in the Miami area and inform the Russian of its location. The U.S. government source, who might be better described as an informant, was not identified. It was also unclear why a Mexican scientist based in Singapore might have been chosen for such a mission. Two wivesBut U.S. authorities revealed in an indictment that Cabrera had a Mexican wife and simultaneously also had another Russian wife. The Russian wife had traveled back to her home country in March to arrange some documents, but was then prevented by Russian authorities from leaving the country, in what may have been part of an effort by the Russians to pressure Cabrera into working for them. Cabrera was arrested and charged with acting within the United States on behalf of a foreign government — in this case, Russia — without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and conspiracy to do the same, according to the Justice Department. A pretrial detention hearing was set for Friday in U.S. Magistrate Court in Miami and arraignment for March 3 in the same court. Cabrera is listed as an associate professor at the medical school jointly run by Duke University and the National University of Singapore. He also was appointed director in 2018 of the FEMSA Biotechnology Center at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in northern Mexico, which said he earned doctorates in molecular microbiology in Russia and molecular cardiology in Germany. Matus, the mayor, described Cabrera as a hometown boy who made good, going abroad to study for his graduate degrees. But he said Cabrera never forgot his hometown of 9,500 and helped organize the scientific community to assist in rebuilding houses in El Espinal after a magnitude 8.1 quake hit on September 7, 2017, and a 6.1 temblor struck two weeks later. The town has a large Zapotec indigenous community. Development meetings setCabrera had been scheduled to attend meetings in Mexico on Monday about a series of research centers that he was helping to establish in El Espinal as part of the government’s huge Trans-Isthmus development project, which is meant to upgrade rail links between the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico through Mexico’s narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The $430 million project is one of the infrastructure priorities of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Cabrera was a leading promoter of El Espinal’s role in the project, helping recruit Mexican universities and government agencies to set up research centers on medicine, seismology, logistics and other topics there. According to the Justice Department, a Russian government official recruited Cabrera in 2019. The Russian official later directed him to rent a specific property in Miami-Dade County, Florida, but not in his own name, the Justice Department said. Cabrera traveled twice to Moscow to meet with the official, the Justice Department said, and during the second meeting he received a physical description of the U.S. government source’s vehicle. The Russian official told Cabrera to locate the car, obtain the source’s vehicle license plate number, and note the physical location of the source’s vehicle with the goal of providing that information in April or May. The Justice Department said Cabrera, having traveled from Mexico City to Miami on February 13, attracted the attention of a security guard where the U.S. government source resided because his rental car entered the premises while tailgating another vehicle. According to the indictment, Cabrera asked his Mexican wife, who accompanied him, to take a photo of the source’s vehicle and license plate — a step taken for convenience even though the Russian official had told him not to take a photo — just to write the number down. U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped Cabrera and his wife when they appeared at Miami’s airport Sunday night to return to Mexico City. Cabrera admitted to law enforcement officers that he was directed by a Russian government official to conduct the operation, the Justice Department said. 
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Russia’s entry ban for Chinese nationals will be partial and affect only those who travel with tourist, private, student or work visas, the country’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, clarifying the conditions of a sweeping entry ban for Chinese citizens announced the day before. Visitors with official, business, humanitarian or transit visas will still be allowed into the country, the ministry said. The ban goes into effect Thursday at midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT). It was announced by the Russian government on Tuesday amid the new coronavirus outbreak centered in China that has infected more than 75,000 people worldwide. The measure is one of many Russia has taken to keep the virus from spreading. The country so far has reported three confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease — two Chinese citizens in Russia who were treated and released, and a Russian national infected on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Trains stopped, school vacation extendedRussia suspended all trains to China and North Korea, shut down its land border with China and Mongolia, and extended a school vacation for Chinese students until March 1. Hundreds of Russians who returned from China this year have been hospitalized as a precaution, and medics continue to monitor more than 14,000 people in total. However, while some of these steps at first appeared sweeping, they turned out to have loopholes and caveats that allowed Russia to maintain its political and economic ties with China. Those ties became increasingly important for Moscow after its relations with the West soured over Russian’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other disputes. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova argued that the entry ban was necessary because Russia lacks enough facilities to hospitalize all Chinese travelers who may have the virus. Ensuring quarantine conditions with permanent monitoring for thousands of travelers from China is unfeasible,'' Golikova said. As described Wednesday, this week's partial entry ban would minimize the effect on business connections between China and Russia and on the operation of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, a major transit hub for Chinese tourists traveling to Europe. FILE - A medical staffer works with test systems for the diagnosis of coronavirus at the Krasnodar Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology microbiology lab in Krasnodar, Russia, Feb. 4, 2020.In the same vein, the Russian government last month halted most air traffic to China, with exceptions for four Chinese airlines and flagship Russian carrier Aeroflot. Currently, there are still regular flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. China has remained a top trading partner for Russia for the last decade, so cutting the ties completely is hardly an option, said Alexander Gabuyev, chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. This contradiction between the need to … control the spread of disease and at the same time to maintain good economic ties with China is dictating this two-steps-forward-one-step-back policy,” Gabuyev said. Visitors coming to Russia for business or humanitarian purposes account for 10% of all Chinese travelers, according to Gabuyev. Last year, 1.5 million Chinese tourists traveled to Russia. Millions could be lostHowever, Russia’s tourism industry is about to suffer a significant blow with the flow of Chinese visitors effectively cut off during the entry ban. Because of all the restrictions, tour operators working with Chinese travelers could lose up to $47 million of profits in the coming months, Maya Lomidze, head of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, said Wednesday. The forecast is pessimistic at this point,'' Lomidze said.It would be good to have an understanding of how the situation in China will unfold and how long the travel ban for Chinese nationals will last.” 
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A man in Florida is suing one of Latin America’s largest airlines, saying his 6-year-old son was sexually assaulted by an airline employee while traveling as an unaccompanied minor from Brazil to the U.S.The father filed the negligence lawsuit Monday against LATAM Airlines in federal court in Orlando, Florida.In a statement, a spokesman for LATAM said the company hadn’t received a summons related to the lawsuit. “However, it takes any allegation of this nature seriously and will fully cooperate with any resulting investigation,” the statement said.  In 2018, the boy’s mother put him on a LATAM flight from Belo Horizonte to Sao Paulo with the expectation that her son would then transfer to a Florida-bound flight, according to the lawsuit.The boy had his Brazilian and U.S. passports, as well as airline documents, in a plastic folder around his neck. At some point, a flight attendant removed the folder and placed the documents in the boy’s backpack. The boy was handed off to another LATAM employee when he landed in Sao Paulo, but the flight attendant neglected to tell the employee where the travel documents were, the lawsuit said.Because they couldn’t find the documents, Brazilian Federal Police refused to let the boy on the connecting flight. By the time the airline employee found the documents in the backpack, the Florida-bound flight had taken off, according to the lawsuit.The airline decided to put the boy up at a nearby hotel where four airline employees took turns supervising him over 15 hours. One of the employees — a man — sexually assaulted the boy, the lawsuit said.The lawsuit said the airline failed to train its employees, minimize risks and supervise its employees.”LATAM, and the airline industry generally, had actual knowledge of the risk to unaccompanied minor children during lengthy layovers, and that unaccompanied minors who are negligently cared for could result in assaults of children,” the lawsuit said.The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.A spokeswoman for the father’s attorney on Wednesday would not comment when asked whether law enforcement was notified.
 
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A lawyer for Julian Assange said Wednesday that the WikiLeaks founder plans to claim during his extradition hearing that he was offered a pardon by the Trump administration if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.Assange is fighting extradition to the United States on spying charges, and his full court hearing is due to begin next week.At a preliminary hearing, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said that in August 2017, then-Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange leaves in a prison van after appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court for an administrative hearing in London, Jan. 13, 2020.Fitzgerald said a statement from another Assange lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, recounted “Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr. Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Emails embarrassing for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks in 2016.District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said the evidence was admissible in the extradition case.Assange appeared at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday by video-link from Belmarsh prison, where he is being held as he awaits his extradition hearing.U.S. prosecutors have charged the 48-year-old Australian computer hacker with espionage over WikiLeaks’ hacking of hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents. If found guilty, he faces up to 175 years in jail.He argues he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection.Assange spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy after holing up there in 2012 to avoid questioning in Sweden over unrelated sexual assault allegations.Assange was evicted from the embassy in April 2019 and was arrested by British police for jumping bail in 2012. In November, Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed.There is no quick end in sight to Assange’s long legal saga. His full extradition hearing is due to begin with a week of legal argument starting Monday. It will resume in May, and a ruling is not expected for several months, with the losing side likely to appeal.
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​In October 2016, the head of Russia’s largest oil company traveled to the birthplace of Hugo Chavez, in the empty, sweltering plains of Venezuela, to unveil a giant bronze statue  of the late socialist leader that he and his longtime friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, commissioned from a prominent Russian artist.It was a turning point in the relationship between Russia and Venezuela, and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin brought with him a 600-year-old choir from a Moscow monastery to celebrate. Speaking to throngs of red-shirted government supporters in fluent Spanish gleaned from his days as a Soviet military translator in Africa, Sechin praised Chavez as a “leader of multi-polarity” and a “symbol of an entire era.”
“We have no choice between victory or death,” said Sechin, quoting a Venezuelan independence hero to describe the deepening ties between the two U.S. adversaries. “We must achieve victory.”
Now the Trump administration wants to break up that blossoming alliance as part of its campaign to oust Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro.
On Tuesday, the Treasury Department blocked U.S. companies from doing business with Rosneft Trading SA, accusing the Geneva subsidiary of the Russian state-owned oil giant of providing a critical lifeline to Maduro as he seeks to bypass U.S. sanctions.
For months, U.S. officials have been warning foreign companies that they could face retaliation if they continue to do business with Maduro. Those admonishments have been aimed primarily at Russia, which U.S. officials say handles about 70% of Venezuelan oil transactions that have been rerouted since the Trump administration a year ago made it illegal for Americans to by crude from Venezuela.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said the latest actions should send a chill through companies in Spain, China and elsewhere that continue to partner with state-run oil monopoly PDVSA. It could also foretell the ending of a special license for Chevron that has so far exempted the San Ramon, California-based company from having to pull out of the country, where it’s a partner in joint ventures with PDVSA that produce about a quarter of the OPEC nation’s total production.
“It’s no longer the dog barking,” said Monaldi. “It’s biting now.”
PDVSA in a statement condemned what it called “economic assassination” by the U.S. aimed at taking control of Venezuela’s oil industry. Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said the new actions would bolster Venezuela’s lawsuit filed against the Trump administration at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Rosneft operates with PDVSA several oil fields that it acquired after U.S. drillers were forced out by Chavez’s nationalization drive.
But as the new, go-to supplier of the country’s pariah crude it wins two ways, according to analysts. First, Rosneft purchases Venezuela’s premium Merey 16 crude at a steep discount. It then uses the proceeds from its sale to pay down $6.5 billion lent to PDVSA since 2014 for the purchase of Russian-made weaponry and other goods.
Meanwhile, refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast that used to depend on Venezuela’s heavy crude have nearly tripled their imports of unfinished Russian petroleum products in the year since sanctions have been in place, according to U.S. Energy Department data.
To avoid complications for customers in China and India, Rosneft has been hiring tankers that try to hide their cargo by turning off their mandatory tracking systems and carrying out risky ship-to-ship transfers off the coast of west Africa and other distant locations.
In the short term, he expects Maduro will have to pay more to find another intermediary to take on the added risk of moving the country’s oil. That means his cash-strapped government will have even less money to import scarce food and medical supplies as well as repair the country’s crumbling electricity infrastructure. And with storage facilities already at capacity, production that is already at a seven-decade low is likely to fall even further, he added.
Still, short of a U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan ports — a military option that the Trump administration has refused to rule out but has shown no sign of pursuing — nobody expects oil sales from the nation sitting atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves to dry up completely.
“They can find always find ways to sell it, but it’s much harder,” said Monaldi.
Even less clear is the impact on the U.S.’ goal of engaging Russia to find a solution to Venezuela’s year-old political impasse.
The U.S. leads a group of now nearly 60 nations that recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader following what it considers Maduro’s fraudulent 2018 re-election. In turn, Russia has accused the Trump administration of spreading false information to engineer a coup, needling the U.S. in what has traditionally been considered Washington’s backyard as the two sides wage proxy battles for influence in Syria, Ukraine and other global hot spots.
Richard Nephew, an energy researcher at Columbia University, said that in sparing Rosneft itself, and only going after one of its many units, the impact on Russia’s continued political support for Maduro is likely to be more muted.
The bulk of Rosneft’s long-term supply contracts are arranged directly by the parent company in Moscow, with the Swiss-based trading unit handling spot sales, he said. The sanctions also include a three-month winding down period, which should give the company — and ravenous oil traders — plenty of time to redirect transactions, including with Venezuela.
In addition, Rosneft and Sechin were already partially sanctioned in 2014 in retaliation for Russia’s annexation of Crimean peninsula in Ukraine. As a result, many U.S. companies had already been steering clear of the company.
“This seems more like a warning shot designed to look bigger than it actually is,” said Nephew, who helped design U.S. sanctions policy while at the State Department under President Barack Obama. “It’s shooting someone who is Russian sounding without really punishing the Russians themselves.”
Several pro-Putin lawmakers were dismissive of the actions, saying they would appeal to the World Trade Organization to remove what they described as unilateral, unlawful U.S. actions.
“I think this issue can be resolved,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told RIA Novosti news agency. “They’re smart over there [in Rosneft] and they will find a way to get around it.”
But even if Putin maintains outward support for Maduro, it’s unclear if he’ll double down and lend even more money to the bankrupt country.
At the height of unrest in 2018, anti-government protesters tried to destroy the Chavez statue dedicated by Russia. Today, it’s under heavy guard, pointing to the uneasy calm that prevails in the normally pro-government Venezuelan countryside, where power outages are an almost daily occurrence and misery widespread.
While Venezuela has stayed current on its debt to Russia, and is expected to pay off the last remaining amount in the coming weeks, it’s defaulted on almost all other lenders and investors in the country’s bonds. Meanwhile, its debt with Russia is backed by a lien on 49.9% of PDVSA’s American subsidiary, Houston-based CITGO, control of which the Trump administration has handed to a board named by Guaido.
“The Russians are nothing if not good chess players,” Russ Dallen, the Miami-based head of Caracas Capital Markets brokerage, wrote in a recent report. Rosneft’s “choice here will be an important tell for us about the future direction of their policy.” 
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Turkey’s president Wednesday criticized the European Union’s decision to launch a maritime effort focused on enforcing the U.N arms embargo around Libya, accusing European nations that agreed to the operation of “interfering in the region.”Recep Tayyip Erdogan also hailed a decision by Libya’s U.N.-supported government to withdraw from talks with rivals following an attack Tuesday on the sea port of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.EU foreign ministers agreed earlier this week to end Operation Sophia, the bloc’s naval mission in the Mediterranean Sea, and launch a maritime effort focused more on implementing the U.N. arms embargo around Libya.Operation Sophia was set up in 2015 as tens of thousands of migrants headed across the sea from North Africa to Europe. Its aim was to crack down on migrant smugglers, but also to enforcethe 2011 arms embargo, which is routinely being flouted.EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said several European countries had offered to take part in the new operation.“I want to specifically mention that the EU does not have the right to make any decision concerning Libya,” Erdogan said in a speech to legislators from his ruling party in parliament. “The EU is trying to take charge of the situation and interfere.”Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. Relentless turmoil subsequently engulfed the oil-rich country, which is now split between rival governments based in its east and west, each backed by an array of foreign countries apparently jockeying for influence to control Libya’s resources.The U.N.-supported government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey and Qatar. On the other side are the eastern-based forces of commander Khalifa Hifter, which rely on military assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia.Hifter was in Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.The parties “noted the important role” of talks that took place in Moscow on Jan. 13 in “implementing a ceasefire and starting the process of normalizing the situation in the country.” The statement also reiterated the need to comply with decisions made during a Berlin peace summit last month.In the Berlin conference, world powers and other countries with interests in Libya’s long-running civil war agreed to respect the much-violated arms embargo, hold off on military support to the warring parties, and push the sides to reach a full cease-fire.The U.N. special envoy to for Libya, Ghassan Salame, however has accused some countries of stepping up weapons deliveries to Libya’s warring sides in hopes of a military victory.Fighting between the country’s factions has intensified over the past year. Recently, Turkey sent hundreds of Syrian fighters, including militants affiliated with groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, to fight on behalf of the Tripoli-based government to defend the city from Hifter’s offensive.The Turkish leader also voiced support for Tuesday’s decision by the Tripoli-based government to suspend participation in U.N.-brokered talks in Geneva, following an attack by Hifter’s forces on Tripoli’s port.“It is the right decision,” Erdogan said.He added that Turkey would continue supporting the Tripoli-based government to “establish dominance” over the whole of the country.Hifter’s forces claimed they hit a weapons and ammunition depot at the port on Tuesday “to weaken the combat capabilities of the mercenaries who arrived from Syria” to fight alongside Tripoli-based militias.The Geneva talks between Libya’s warring sides had resumed earlier on Tuesday in a bid to salvage a fragile cease-fire in the North African nation. The current cease-fire was brokered by Russia and Turkey on Jan. 12 to deescalate the fight for control of Tripoli, but both sides have repeatedly violated the truce. 
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An international appeals court in the Netherlands has ordered Russia to pay $50 billion in compensation to shareholders of the former oil company, Yukos.It is the latest chapter in a long-running saga that came to define Russia’s political and business climate in the early years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.According to the ruling issued by The Hague Court of Appeal, Yukos — the one-time oil giant owned by Russian businessman-turned-Kremlin-foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky — unfairly lost tens of billions of dollars in revenue after Khodorkovsky was jailed and his company seized by the Russian government amid unpaid tax claims in 2004.Tuesday’s ruling in effect reinstated an earlier 2014 court-ordered compensation package that had been overturned during a later appeal that went in Russia’s favor.The court ruled that decision “not correct,” adding “the arbitration order is in force again.”Yukos alumni and allies celebrated the decision. “This is a victory for the rule of law,” Tim Osborne, chief executive of GML, a company that represents Yukos shareholders, said in a statement. “The independent courts of a democracy have shown their integrity and served justice. A brutal kleptocracy has been held to account.”Russia’s Justice Ministry indicated it would appeal the decision, arguing the court ”failed to take into account the illegitimate use by former Yukos shareholders of the Energy Charter Treaty that wasn’t ratified by the Russian Federation.”The ministry also noted that a 2011 European Court for Human Rights review had rejected allegations the case against Yukos was politically motivated.In a message posted on Facebook, Khodorkovsky denied that he had gained financially from the decision, but celebrated its outcome nonetheless.“For it has confirmed not only in procedure but in essence: The seizure of Yukos was not about taxes, but a fight with a political opponent,” he said.New president, ambitious oligarchThe Yukos case played an outsized role in defining what kind of Russia Putin would come to build.On the surface, it was a business dispute. The Kremlin argued that Khodorkovsky and his company owed millions in unpaid taxes. In reality, it was more about politics and power.  Putin, still relatively new to the Kremlin post in the early 2000s, sought to assert himself over powerful business barons — the so-called oligarchs — who had played a big role in government affairs under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.Putin’s offer: Stay out of politics and keep your wealth.  While some took the warning seriously, Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s wealthiest man, continued to openly fund Russia’s budding civil society and liberal political parties.  To supporters, Khodorkovsky represented the best of an emerging Russian business culture — a reformed oligarch looking to play by western rules of transparency and fair play.To his detractors, including Putin, he was merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  The arrestA turning point was a meeting with Putin and the business elite in 2003, in which Khodorkovsky and the Kremlin leader openly sparred over corruption.Six months later, FSB agents stormed Khodorkovsky’s plane at a Siberian airport. Russia’s wealthiest man was now its most famous prisoner.  An initial trial found him guilty of tax evasion and sentenced him to nine years in prison. A second criminal investigation added money laundering and additional years to Khodorkovsky’s prison term.Amnesty International labeled the former tycoon a prisoner of conscience.Meanwhile, the Kremlin oversaw Yukos’s dismantling, divvying up its prized assets to a new cadre of Kremlin loyalists at bargain prices until the oil giant was bankrupt.Life after prison  Putin freed Khodorkovsky as part of a wider amnesty ahead of the Sochi Games in 2014 — and a promise the businessman would stay out of politics.  Yet Russia, and Putin, have remained the focus of Khodorkovsky’s work after he fled Russia for Europe.He relaunched his NGO, Open Russia, with an eye toward reforming Russian civil society and insuring free and fair elections.  The organization was put on Russia’s “undesirable organizations” list in 2017, and its employees were routinely hounded by police.In a further sign that Khodorkovsky’s activities are perceived as a threat to the Kremlin, Putin proposed a ban on Russians who lived abroad from assuming the presidency, amid a wide-ranging set of reforms to the constitution earlier this year.  The amendment, currently under review by Russian lawmakers, seemed almost tailor-made to Khodorkovsky.And yet, it was another constitutional amendment suggested by Putin — that Russia no longer abide by international court decisions when it felt its state interests were infringed — that seemed to anticipate today’s Hague ruling in favor of compensation.Indeed, while Khodorkovsky acknowledged money to Yukos would likely not be forthcoming, he waxed lyrical on Russia’s future beyond the Putin era. “Russia is my homeland. And my homeland has no secret accounts, does not rob companies, and has no political opponents,” Khodorkovsky said on Twitter. “It has only sons.”Россия мне и не должна. Россия – моя Родина, а Родина тайных счетов не имеет, компании не ворует и политических противников у нее нет. Только сыновья. А вот с Кремлем счеты не закрыты и луж для всех кремлевских приготовлено еще не мало. pic.twitter.com/uzGrq5KZgy— Ходорковский Михаил (@mich261213) February 18, 2020
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When avalanches crash down mountainsides, it is a race against time to find those buried in the snow.  Rescue teams rush to emergency sites.  At that point, they deploy their secret weapon.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports rescue dogs dig deep for disaster relief.
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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro repeated a debunked sexually charged allegation about one of the country’s more prominent journalists on Tuesday, drawing fire from press freedom advocates and even some recent allies.Bolsonaro referred to Patricia Campos Mello, a reporter for newspaper Folha de S. Paulo who last year won the International Press Freedom Award after coverage of his presidential campaign. She’d also been honored for earlier reporting from the Middle East, U.S. and Africa.A witness in a congressional hearing testified she had insinuated an offer of sex in exchange for help with a story that triggered an investigation of Bolsonaro’s campaign by Brazil’s top electoral court. Her newspaper quickly debunked the assertion by releasing transcripts, screenshots and recordings of their conversations.Still, Bolsonaro echoed the insinuation as he spoke outside the presidential residence in Brasilia.“He talked about the journalist’s harassment, hitting on him. She wanted a scoop, she wanted to give a scoop, at any price, against me,” Bolsonaro said with a smile, using a Portuguese word for “scoop” that can have sexual connotations. That drew laughs from his supporters.Hours later Bolsonaro spoke to journalists again at the same spot. “Is there anyone from Folha there? So I sexually attacked your reporter? OK. I don’t want to talk to you,” he said before walking away.FILE – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters after attending a Changing of the Guard at the Planalto Presidential Palace, in Brasilia, Nov. 28, 2019.The Brazilian Press Association issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment cowardly and embarrassing to Brazilians.“This misogynous behavior is undeserving of the office of the President and an affront to the Constitution,” the statement said.Folha, issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment an attack to all professional journalists. “He also tars the dignity, the honor and the decorum as stated by the law for the exercise of the presidency,” the daily added.Campos Mello declined to comment on Bolsonaro’s insult.She has suffered online abuse and received threats from supporters of the Brazilian president since October 2018, when Folha published her report on a network of businessmen who allegedly sponsored the production of false news against rival candidate, Fernando Haddad.The wave of insults against the journalist returned last week after the testimony in Congress.Like U.S. President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro frequently speaks off the cuff, doesn’t shy from comments perceived as politically incorrect and often uses the press as a foil to rally support. He has repeatedly said that journalists willfully misconstrue his statements and are seeking to undermine his administration.The incident in Brasilia follows two recent examples of Bolsonaro making offensive arm gestures at a group of journalists.The Brazilian association of investigative journalism and the Brazilian bar association’s press freedom branch issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing “vehement repudiation” of Tuesday’s statement.Even the right-wing party that sponsored Bolsonaro’s run for president repudiated his comments. The Social Liberal Party said called the president’s attacks unacceptable and said “they deserve the repudiation of good Brazilians.” 
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Turkey’s civil society swung from hope to despair Tuesday after a new arrest warrant was issued for leading rights defender Osman Kavala just hours after a court ordered his release from jail.Kavala and eight other defendants were acquitted by a court outside Istanbul in the highly controversial Gezi Park trial.But within hours, a new warrant from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office called for his arrest as part of the investigation into a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.FILE – Osman Kavala, April 29, 2015It was not immediately clear if Kavala would be released from jail, where he has spent more than 800 days in pre-trial detention.The judge had earlier said there was “not enough concrete evidence” that he and the other defendants sought to overthrow the government.Seven other defendants, who remain on the run, were not formally acquitted.Kavala, the only defendant kept in jail throughout the trial, faced a life sentence without parole if convicted for his alleged role in orchestrating the Gezi Park protests of 2013 that presented the first major challenge to Erdogan, then prime minister.News of a fresh arrest warrant came as supporters waited for him to be released from the Silivri court and prison complex, and was met with shocked silence.Kavala has became a symbol of what critics say is a crackdown on civil society under Erdogan, and received loud cheers as he left the packed courtroom in Silivri, on the outskirts of Istanbul.’Mockery’The mass protests of 2013 began over plans to demolish Gezi Park — one of the only green spaces in Istanbul’s center — but quickly spiraled into broader demonstrations against the government.Critics have called the Gezi trial “a mockery” in which the prosecution failed to present any evidence of wrong-doing by the defendants.”This is a trial that should have never happened in the first place. This whole process has caused untold misery to those who were so wrongfully targeted,” Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch told AFP at the courthouse.Turkish sociologist Ayse Bugra, wife of Turkish rights defender Osman Kavala, reacts after Istanbul prosecutors issued a new arrest warrant for Kavala, in Silivri, near Istanbul, Feb. 18, 2020.Andrew Gardner of Amnesty International had earlier warned that the verdict should not create too much optimism.There are “countless other trials of journalists, of opposition political activists, of human rights defenders. The justice system is completely devoid of independence and impartiality in Turkey,” he told AFP.In December, the European Court of Human Rights heavily criticized the quality of the Gezi Park prosecution.It ruled that the 657-page indictment against Kavala lacked “facts, information or evidence” to raise even the suspicion that he helped organize the protests, let alone attempted to overthrow the government, and called for his immediate release.The Turkish court still put Kavala and the other defendants through two more hearings in December and January.The acquittal was welcomed by several foreign observers, including the U.S. embassy in Ankara and the Council of Europe, a 47-nation body overseeing human rights, of which Turkey is a member.Among the criticisms of the trial was the fact that defense lawyers were denied the chance to cross-examine the key government witness, identified as Murat Papuc, when he gave evidence in December after he claimed his life was in danger.Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul metropolitan municipality, speaks during a rally in Istanbul, Feb. 18, 2020.Lawyers also decried the inclusion of testimony from a police officer convicted of kicking a Gezi Park protester to death in July 2013, who now portrays himself as a victim of the demonstrations.The defendants received support from Ekrem Imamoglu, the new high-profile mayor of Istanbul who took control of the city out of the hands of the ruling party last year.”The acquittal of all the defendants in the #GeziPark trial is a true source of joy, and restores trust in the Turkish judicial system. I salute all those who stand to defend our city’s history, culture and nature,” he tweeted.Kavala’s supporters say he was targeted because he worked to build bridges across Turkey’s often fractious ethnic and social divides, in contrast to the combative rhetoric favored by Erdogan’s ruling party.
 
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French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he would curb the practice of foreign countries sending imams and teachers to France to crack down on what he called the risk of “separatism.”Macron has so far stayed away from issues related to France’s Muslim community, the biggest in Europe, focusing instead on economic reforms.Mayoral elections a month awayIn a much-anticipated intervention less than a month before mayoral elections, Macron said he would gradually put an end to the system in which Algeria, Morocco and Turkey send imams to France to preach in mosques.”This end to the consular Islam system is extremely important to curb foreign influence and make sure everybody respects the laws of the republic,” he told a news conference in the eastern city of Mulhouse.Macron said 300 imams were sent to France every year by these countries, and that those who arrived in 2020 would be the last to arrive in such numbers.He said his government had asked the body representing Islam in France to find solutions to train imams on French soil instead, make sure they can speak French and don’t spread Islamist views.Macron, who is constantly attacked by far-right leader Marine Le Pen on the issue of how to integrate French Muslims, also said he would end the practice of French students being taught by teachers paid by foreign governments.Deal with Turkey lackingFrance has agreements with nine countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, whereby their governments can send teachers to French schools to teach languages to students originally from these countries.Macron said he had found an agreement to end the practice with all of these countries except Turkey.”I won’t let any country, whatever it is, feed separatism,” Macron said. “You can’t have Turkish law on French soil. That can’t be.”France has suffered major attacks by Islamist militants in recent years. Co-ordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and other sites around Paris killed 130 people — the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two.
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The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday on a Russian state-controlled brokerage that has helped the Venezuelan government skirt an American oil embargo and enabled President Nicolas Maduro keep his grip on power in the South American country.Administration officials said Rosneft Trading S.A. and its president, Didier Casimiro, would be added to a financial blacklist in a move that is expected to largely freeze him and the company out of the global financial system.The action is an unusually strong move against a company linked to the Russian state and amounts to a substantial escalation of a U.S.-led campaign that has failed to oust Maduro from power.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Rosneft Trading is the primary broker for the sale and transportation of Venezuelan crude oil.”Rosneft Trading has propped up the dictatorial Maduro, enabling his repression of the Venezuelan people,” he said in announcing the sanctions.Rosneft Trading is incorporated in Switzerland and Russian-owned, according to the State Department. The parent company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said the country would continue to cooperate with Venezuela in the energy sector despite the U.S. sanctions. “One doesn’t abandon friends in need,” Zavalny said.The U.S. and about 60 other countries say Maduro’s reelection in 2018 was not legitimate and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president.The U.S. is considering additional economic sanctions aimed at further tightening economic pressure on the Maduro government, the special U.S. envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told reporters.Maduro has held on to power despite runaway hyperinflation, a massive exodus and shortages of food and medicine and the international pressure that has left his socialist administration isolated.Venezuela managed to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil last year with the help of Rosneft Trading despite sanctions on its petroleum sector imposed by the Trump administration last year.FILE – The leader of Venezuela’s political opposition Juan Guaido makes a speech at the Madrid regional government building during a visit to Madrid, Spain, Jan. 25, 2020.Opposition leader Juan Guaido called the latest sanctions a “new victory!””Whoever supports the dictator, from whatever part of the world, will bear the consequences,” Guaido tweeted. “Those who collaborate with democracy will be welcomed.”Guaido launched a campaign to oust Maduro a year ago but so far has failed to make it a reality. He has been unable to flip the military’s loyalty away from Maduro.In recent months the Venezuelans who had fervently supported Guaido early on had stopped filling the streets for demonstrations, and Maduro has grown emboldened.The action against Rosneft Trading and Casamiro means that any assets they have in the U.S. or in the control of U.S. financial institutions will be frozen. In addition, anyone who does business with them could face American sanctions, which senior administration officials told reporters should largely freeze the company out of the global financial system.The officials said the move was not expected to have a significant effect on global oil prices.Officials also said that President Donald Trump approved the move. They said he has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past about U.S. objections to his country’s support for Maduro.
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Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists blamed each other for an outbreak of fighting in the country’s rebel-held east on Tuesday.Ukraine’s military said in a statement that the separatists attempted to advance into the Ukraine-controlled territory but were repelled.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the attack as a “cynical provocation.”Separatist authorities in the Luhansk region, however, blamed Ukraine for starting the fighting. They claimed the fighting erupted when a group of Ukrainian soldiers tried to make an incursion into rebel-held territory near the village of Holubovske, but got into a minefield.The chief of the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, Colonel-General Ruslan Khomchak, said one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another five were wounded in combat. He said four separatists were killed and six others were wounded.The separatists said two Ukrainian troops were killed and three others were wounded and the Ukrainian forces launched an artillery barrage to cover their evacuation.They said a civilian resident in Holubovske was wounded by the Ukrainian shelling that also damaged civilian infrastructure in the villages of Kirovsk and Donetskiy.The exchange of gunfire marks the latest spike in hostilities in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed over 14,000 people since 2014.A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped reduce the scope of fighting, but sporadic clashes have continued and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.During a meeting in Paris in December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany made a deal to exchange prisoners and pledged to ensure a lasting cease-fire in fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists. They made no progress, however, on key contentious issues — a timeline for local elections in eastern Ukraine and when Ukraine can get back control of its borders in the rebel-held region.Zelenskiy said on Facebook that Tuesday’s outbreak of hostilities was an attempt to derail efforts to end the conflict and said he would call a meeting of his Security Council to discuss the situation.“Our course for ending the war and our adherence to international agreements remain unchanged, just as our determination to repel any acts of aggression against Ukraine,” he said.
 
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European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to launch a revamped mission to try to monitor and enforce an international weapons embargo on warn-torn Libya. After meeting European counterparts, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced naval assets would be deployed to the Mediterranean to help enforce the ban.The German foreign minister told reporters the planned EU mission was a major step toward fulfilling the EU’s commitment made in Berlin last month at an international conference to honor the routinely flouted arms embargo in a bid to stabilize the North African country.
“We all agreed to create a mission to block the entry of arms into Libya,” said Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, after the meeting in Brussels.
The new mission is a revival of Operation Sophia, which was launched in 2015 with the dual mission of curbing human trafficking from North Africa to Europe, while also trying to enforce the U.N. arms embargo on Libya. But few observers believe the new mission will have much impact as EU naval assets will be deployed at least 100 kilometers away from the Libyan coast.The decision to circumscribe the mission to a limited geographic zone, one that easily can be circumnavigated by gunrunners, was the only way to overcome opposition to the deployment of warships by several European leaders led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The Austrian leader has for weeks argued that deploying ships in the Mediterranean Sea would act as a “pull factor” for migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya.With fears mounting that Europe could see another massive influx of asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Africa — thanks to political turmoil in Lebanon and a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the north of his country — EU critics of a deployment off the coast of Libya said the mission would morph quickly from embargo-enforcement to rescuing migrants.EU warships would have little choice but to pick up migrants trying to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing, they said, repeating what happened to Operation Sophia, which had its naval assets stripped away last year under pressure from the populist coalition that was then in power in Rome.FILE – Italian Navy light aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, seen from a helicopter, sails the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Sicily, part of the European Union’s naval mission Operation Sophia, Nov. 25, 2016.Operation Sophia was named after a migrant child born on a German frigate to a Somali mother in 2015. Her mother chose the name at the suggestion of the doctors who helped with the delivery.In a recent interview Kurz warned a naval mission would be “a ticket to Europe for thousands of illegal migrants.” He told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that the vessels would inevitably encourage another migrant influx. Under international law ships — military or civilian — are obliged to rescue people in distress at sea.Libya has been a key gateway for Europe-bound migrants and asylum-seekers. France and Italy have been backing opposing sides in the long-running conflict in the country between an internationally recognized government in Tripoli, which has Rome’s support, and forces from the east of Libya commanded by the renegade general Khalifa Haftar, which are backed by Paris.According to Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, the “maritime assets will be withdrawn” from any area should their presence attract migrants hoping to be picked up at sea. Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said if the EU ships proved to be a “pull factor” for migrants desperate to reach Europe “the mission will be stopped.”In Berlin last month EU leaders joined other powers, including Turkey, Qatar, and Russia, in agreeing to do whatever was needed to implement the U.N. arms embargo and observe a cease-fire. They pledged to ensure their respective international allies stop supplying arms. But within hours of the agreement, which was brokered by Germany’s Angela Merkel, there were reports of the embargo being violated.Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply frustrated with what’s happening in Libya.” He added: “The truth is that the Security Council embargo remains violated.”On Sunday the U.N. deputy special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, described the arms embargo as a joke.FILE – German Navy sailors and Finish Special Forces surround a boat with migrants near the German combat supply ship Frankfurt am Main during the EU’s Operation Sophia, in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya, March 29, 2016.The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Monday that he hopes the new mission will be in operation by the end of March. Borrell admitted negotiations over the maritime mission had been combative, but that several states have volunteered vessels. “There will be no shortage” of ships, he said.  Borrell had been highly critical of the stance of Austria’s Kurz, saying it was absurd for Austria, a landlocked country without a navy, to block the revival of Operation Sophia. But on Monday he struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that some member states had “legitimate concerns” about the “potential impact on migration flows.”He said the EU would do what it can to enforce the embargo but added “we cannot station troops along the Egyptian-Libyan border.” Egypt has been a backer of Gen. Haftar and has reportedly supplied eastern forces with artillery.Ahead of the Brussels meeting, the EU’s top general had warned that a failure to revive a military mission to enforce the arms embargo on Libya would mean the bloc had failed to live up to geopolitical ambitions. In an interview with Politico, Italian General Claudio Graziano said if Sophia wasn’t revived, it would send “an extremely negative message” and would mean the EU is “not able to find a solution.”Humanitarian organizations are criticizing the terms of the new naval mission.“Foreign policy aside, this is hugely concerning from a humanitarian and human rights perspective,” tweeted Liam Kelly, Libya country director for the Danish Refugee Council. He added: “Under International Maritime Law, every State has a duty to render assistance to persons found at sea in danger of being lost and rescue persons in distress. This proposal is exactly the opposite – to withdraw assistance if it is deemed likely to be needed.” 
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Venezuela’s decision to suspend TAP Air Portugal’s flights to Caracas is “completely unfounded and unjustified,” Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said Tuesday.”I can’t see any kind of justification” for the 90-day suspension, Santos Silva said.
Venezuelan authorities took the step Monday after TAP last week carried opposition leader Juan Guaido and his uncle home from an international tour aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro.
Guaido’s uncle was arrested upon landing and accused of trying to bring a small amount of explosives into Venezuela. Portugal ordered an official investigation into that allegation, and Santos Silva said it hasn’t finished yet.
The suspension is a “hostile act” against Portugal, Santos Silva told national news agency Lusa, in comments published by online newspaper Observador.
Portugal is in a coalition of European and Latin American nations, called the “International Contact Group,” that has backed Guaido against Maduro. Thousands of Portuguese immigrants live in Venezuela.
Santos Silva said the suspension would also hurt Venezuelans because the Portuguese flag carrier is one of the few international airlines still serving Caracas, with twice weekly flights.
TAP said in a statement it “meets all the legal and safety requirements demanded” by authorities in both Portugal and Venezuela. 
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The European Union has approved a trade agreement with Vietnam, disproving skeptics who thought the EU’s divorce with Britain and Vietnam human rights concerns would delay the vote.Members of the EU Parliament last week voted 401 to 192 in favor of ratifying the agreement, which would roll back almost all import tariffs between the bloc and Vietnam. The EU is looking for new economic tailwinds amid concerns with other partners: the British exit from the union threatens commerce, while U.S. President Donald Trump has turned his attention from the China trade war to issue more tariffs against the European Union this month. The vote was also welcomed as good news by Vietnam, which worries its economy will be hurt by the U.S.-China trade war and the spread of the new coronavirus.“History shows that isolation does not change a country,”  said Bernd Lange, chair of the EU Parliament trade committee and vice chair of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. “That is why Parliament voted in favor of this trade agreement with Vietnam. With it, we strengthen the role of the EU in Vietnam and the region, ensuring that our voice has more weight than before.”The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement would be Europe’s second in Southeast Asia, after one with Singapore. Its decreased tariffs are expected to increase Vietnamese exports of seafood, textiles, and wood products to the EU, and EU exports of beverages, machinery, and drugs to Vietnam.A cobblestone street is seen in Brussels, the seat of the European Union, which Vietnam is awaiting to finalize a trade agreement. (VOA/Ha Nguyen)This is Europe’s “most ambitious trade agreement with a developing country,” said the German Business Association of Vietnam in an email.The agreement is considered ambitious because it is meant to hold parties to a higher environmental and social standard than merely decreasing tariffs for companies. Vietnam’s one-party state promised to certify that timber isn’t illegally logged before it’s exported, for instance. It also promised to allow labor unions independent of the government.However Emmanuel Maurel, a member of the European Parliament from France, doesn’t believe Vietnam will keep its promise. He also criticized the trade agreement as benefiting not the average citizen but a small fraction of companies that will find it easier to offshore jobs.“There are losers on the Vietnamese side and there are losers on the European side,” he said.Vietnam has not ratified the agreement. Its parliament meets two times a year, so its next chance to vote on the agreement will be in May.Negotiations dragged on for the agreement, which many had expected would have been finalized years ago. Delays included the 2017 inauguration of Trump, who withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership, another trade agreement that included Vietnam. Because Vietnam wanted to implement the TPP and the EU agreement at the same time, it postponed the latter deal until more recently.However now Vietnam has welcomed the European Union’s favorable vote this month and looks set to emulate it.“This is a meaningful result for Vietnam and the EU, two comprehensive strategic partners,” Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh, said.
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An adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who had discussed the benefits of forced contraception quit Monday, saying “media hysteria” about his old online posts meant he had become a distraction for the government.Earlier, Johnson’s spokesman repeatedly refused to comment when asked about Andrew Sabisky, whose appointment drew widespread criticism after the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported statements made in his name online in 2014 and 2016.In addition to posts on contraception, Sabisky also said data showed the U.S. black population had lower IQ than white people, and, in a 2016 interview with digital publication Schools Week, discussed the benefits of genetic selection.Media reported Sabisky was hired following an unusual appeal earlier this year from Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to help bring new ideas to Britain’s government.His resignation is a blow to that effort, which had attracted criticism from those who said Cummings was sidestepping normal government recruitment processes.”The media hysteria about my old stuff online is mad but I wanted to help (the government) not be a distraction,” Sabisky said on Twitter.”Accordingly I’ve decided to resign as a contractor … I signed up to do real work, not be in the middle of a giant character assassination: if I can’t do the work properly there’s no point.”Sabisky, who has referred to himself as a “super forecaster,” said he hoped Johnson’s office hired more people with “good geopolitical forecasting track records” and that the “media learn to stop selective quoting.”Both the opposition Labour Party and at least two of Johnson’s own Conservatives had called for him to be fired.”Andrew Sabisky’s presence in No.10 is a poor reflection on the government and there is no way to defend it. He needs to go. ‘Weirdos’ and ‘misfits’ are all very well, but please can they not gratuitously cause offense,” Conservative lawmaker William Wragg wrote on Twitter before Sabisky resigned.Online postsAn account in Sabisky’s name made the comments about black IQ in a reply to a 2014 blog post written by an American professor discussing education disabilities in the United States.In 2016, replying to a blog post written by Cummings, an account in Sabisky’s name said:”One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty. Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”Johnson’s spokesman earlier repeatedly refused to comment on whether Johnson shared Sabisky’s views, saying only that the prime minister’s own views were well known. He would not confirm the nature of Sabisky’s role.
 
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Britain issued severe flood warnings Monday, advising of life-threatening danger after Storm Dennis dumped weeks’ worth of rain in some places. A woman was found dead after being swept away by the floodwaters, the storm’s third confirmed victim.To the east, Dennis’ gale-force winds also left nine people injured in Germany as their vehicles crashed into broken trees littering roads and train tracks. Flooding and power outages were reported elsewhere in northern Europe.By Monday evening, Britain’s Environment Agency issued seven severe flood warnings in the central English counties of Herefordshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire. Another 200 lower-level flood warnings were also in place, meaning that flooding was expected.Some 480 flood warnings and alerts were issued across England on Monday, the highest number on record, the agency said.A man uses a plank of wood to paddle a kayak on floodwater after the River Wye burst its banks in Ross-on-Wye, western England, Feb. 17, 2020, in the aftermath of Storm Dennis.The storm’s confirmed death toll rose to three as West Mercia Police said a body had been found in the search for a 55-year-old woman who had been missing near Tenbury in Worcestershire since Sunday.A man pulled from the water in the same incident was airlifted to a hospital, where he remains in stable condition, police said.’I’ve never seen anything like it’The weather system brought winds of more than 145 kph (90 mph) and up to 150 millimeters (6 inches) of rain to Britain over the weekend. And the tumult is not over.”We expect disruptive weather into the middle of this week bringing a significant flood risk for the West Midlands, and there are flood warnings in place across much of England,” said Toby Willison, Executive Director of Operations at Britain’s Environment Agency.Forecasters said river levels in parts of northern England had yet to reach their peak. In the northern England city of York, authorities were piling up more than 4,000 sandbags as the River Ouse continued to rise. It’s expected to peak Tuesday.Other residents in Wales and western England were cleaning up Monday after the storm flooded roads, railways, homes and businesses and disrupted travel across Britain. Some told stories of fleeing for their lives.People bail water out of flooded homes after the River Wye burst its banks in Ross-on-Wye, western England, Feb. 17, 2020, in the aftermath of Storm Dennis.Jeanette Cox, 68 and her daughter Rachel woke up to the sound of water in their home in the Welsh village of Nantgarw, near Cardiff, about at 4 a.m. Sunday. Cox said the only object that survived downstairs was her wedding day photograph that she had kept on a windowsill. Her husband Bill died from cancer in 2009.”It was pitch black,” she said. “All you could hear was the water running. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was very frightened.”Climate changeBritain’s environment secretary said climate change was making extreme weather events more common. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government denied it was unprepared for such storms.”We’ll never be able to protect every single household, just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme, but we’ve done everything that we can do with a significant sum of money,” Environment Secretary George Eustice said.The fish market is flooded during a storm surge in Hamburg, Germany, Feb. 17, 2020.In Germany, at least nine people were injured in weather-related car accidents as high winds brought trees down onto roads and train tracks.A commuter train with 67 passengers also crashed into a fallen tree in the western German city of Dortmund, but no one was injured. And in the German city of Hamburg, the city’s famous fish market was flooded for the second time this month.Further north, strong winds and heavy rains caused flooding, road closures and electricity outages across the Nordic and Baltic regions and forced the cancellation of several ferries between Denmark and Norway.In Denmark, the southwestern city of Kolding was flooded as gale force winds and heavy rains battered the area. In nearby Horsens, police protectively evacuated residents near Bygholm Lake out of fear that a levee would collapse.In southwestern Norway, more than half a dozen roads and several mountain passes were closed amid heavy snow and high winds.
 
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An Istanbul court is expected Tuesday to deliver a “landmark” verdict on 16 civil society activists on trial for sedition.For one of the defendants, a leading philanthropist and supporter of civil society, the case is drawing international scrutiny seen as pivotal in determining the direction of the country.  “The outcome of this case will show the rest of the world whether respect for human rights has any part to play in the Turkish justice system,” Milena Buyum, Amnesty International’s Turkey campaigner, said in a statement released Monday.FILE – Osman Kavala, April 29, 2015.Prosecutors accused the 16 defendants of supporting and organizing anti-government protests in 2013 against then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is now president.  The protests were called the Gezi movement after the park in Istanbul where they began. Prosecutors are calling for sentences of up to life in prison without parole.Among the accused is Osman Kavala, one of Turkey’s leading philanthropists and supporters of civil society, who has been jailed for more than two years.”He has been a very key linchpin figure in civil society. That is why he has been targeted, and that’s what the European court also said,” said senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch.  “The European court said in December in its ruling the prolonged arbitrary detention is politically motivated and has a chilling effect on the rest of civil society,” she said.Criticism from international observers The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) called for Kavala’s immediate release and an end to the case; however, the Istanbul court refused to release him, saying the ruling was being appealed.The court had released the other 15 defendants at earlier hearings, but they all now risk being returned to jail.”The prosecutor is asking for an aggravated life sentence based on accusations that pass as evidence in the indictment and with meaningless, incoherent, unreasonable interpretations,” Yigit Aksakoglu, a child development specialist who is on trial with Kavala, said in an interview with Turkish media.FILE – Turkish soldiers stand outside the court in a prison complex where the trial of prominent philanthropist Osman Kavala and 15 others started, while people arrive, in Silivri, outside Istanbul, June 24, 2019.Aksakoglu spent seven months in solitary confinement before being released from pre-trial detention.Along with the ECHR, international observers have also sharply criticized the prosecutor’s case, claiming that no concrete evidence has been produced and that prosecutors relied mainly on the testimony of anonymous witnesses.”There is nothing there to support such allegations and charges,” said Sinclair-Webb. “It’s a very example of the misuse of the criminal law, an unfair trial with politically motivated charges.”Controversy increased further at the last hearing in January with the judge’s refusal to allow the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.Sinan Gokcen, the Turkish representative of Swedish-based Civil Rights Defenders, claims the case is part of a broader strategy by Ankara.”Their arrests and this unlawful detention period and denial of all international procedural rights has had a huge effect on civil society. It’s direct intimidation,” Gokcen said.Conspiracy vs. popular uprisingBut Erdogan is vigorously defending the prosecution of the 16 defendants, insisting the Gezi protest was a carefully orchestrated nationwide conspiracy against his rule, organized and financed in part by Kavala and his network of supporters.  A few months before Kavala’s prosecution, Erdogan labeled Kavala a public enemy, accusing him of “financing terrorists” and being a representative of “that famous Jew (George Soros), who tries to divide and tear up nations.”FILE – Riot police fire a water cannon on Gezi Park protesters at Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, June 15, 2013.Erdogan did not elaborate on the comments about Soros, who is an international philanthropist.Six years after the Gezi protests, Erdogan continues to portray the unrest as a conspiracy rather than a popular uprising. At its peak, Gezi spread to nearly every major city and town. Most observers say that rather than being a plot, Gezi was a grass-roots movement with no leadership and in reaction to Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism.If Kavala and the 15 other defendants are convicted, Ankara could pay a high price. The EU has sharply criticized the case, criticism that has increased with the ECHR’s condemnation of the trial.Ankara is looking to the EU for financial support to deal with the latest refugee exodus from Syria’s Idlib province. Analysts warn that assistance could be conditional.
  
“(German Chancellor Angela) Merkel vaguely promised new aid to Turkey for Syrian refugees,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “But according to European Union Turkey rapporteur Nacho Sanchez Amor, if any aid is forthcoming, it will be conditional on the release of people like Osman Kavala and Selahattin Demirtas (the former leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP).”Other analysts suggest Brussels’ priority is to appease Erdogan, ensuring the Turkish president doesn’t carry out his frequent threat to open the borders, which could potentially unleash a new wave of refugees into Europe.  For Aksakoglu, Tuesday’s verdict is a matter of life or death.”He (the prosecutor) wants me to spend my whole life without any hope of leaving the prison. This is equal to capital punishment in Turkey,” he said.
 
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“Be yourself” is the advice former British prime minister Theresa May gave to the Global Women’s Forum in Dubai on Monday, explaining how she had risen to the top job despite refusing to conform to masculine traditions in politics.”I did my politics a different way from the men,” she told the mostly female audience of her entrance to parliament in 1997.”There was still a huge emphasis on men drinking together, getting together into groups and some of the women felt they had to join that and I didn’t,” she said.”I felt I wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it so I did it my way, I was myself and hey, I became prime minister,” she said, provoking laughs from the audience.May served as Britain’s second female prime minister, after the late Margaret Thatcher, and home secretary as well as minister for women and equalities — a role that remains necessary in May’s view.She resigned as premier in July 2019 after three years in the post amid mounting pressure over her inability to carry out Brexit, a topic notably absent from her speech in the United Arab Emirates.At the end of September, during her first major public appearance since leaving Downing Street, May announced she would not rush to write her memoirs.That remains the case, said May, despite the encouragement of many people, including former foreign secretary William Hague.”He thought it was very important that people at the center of events write about them, so that historians can look at what it was like for the individuals involved,” she said.”So maybe, maybe one day, but I am not doing it at the moment,” she added.She advised the women in the audience to persevere in the face of failure and highlighted the causes she continues working on, including domestic violence, modern slavery and mental health.   
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Facebook warned of threats to innovation and freedom of expression on Monday, ahead of the release of a raft of rules by the European Union this week and in coming months to rein in U.S. tech giants and Chinese companies.The social media giant laid out its concerns in a white paper, and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was expected to reiterate the message to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and EU industry chief Thierry Breton in Brussels on Monday.Referring to the possibility that the EU may hold internet companies responsible for hate speech and other illegal speech published on their platforms, Facebook said this ignores the nature of the internet.”Such liability would stifle innovation as well as individuals’ freedom of expression,” it said in the white paper.It suggested new frameworks that should be proportionate and necessary.Zuckerberg’s visit came on the heels of visits by Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and Microsoft President Brad Smith to Brussels last month.Vestager and Breton will announce proposals on Wednesday aimed at exploiting the bloc’s treasure trove of industrial data and challenging the dominance of Facebook, Google and Amazon.They will also propose rules to govern the use of artificial intelligence especially in high risk sectors such as healthcare and transport. 
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Russia said on Friday that plans by the United States to deploy weapons in space would deal an irreversible blow to the current security balance in space, the RIA news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.Russia does not have plans to solve problems in space using weapons, the foreign ministry added. 
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The cardinal’s response was not what Yolanda Martinez  had expected — or could abide.Her son had been sexually abused by a priest of the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order. And now she was calling Cardinal Valasio De Paolis — the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion and to clean it up — to report the settlement the group was offering, and to express her outrage.
The terms: Martinez’s  family would receive 15,000 euros ($16,300) from the order. But in return, her son would have to recant the testimony he gave to Milan prosecutors that the priest had repeatedly assaulted him when he was a 12-year-old student at the order’s youth seminary in northern Italy. He would have to lie.
The cardinal did not seem shocked. He did not share her indignation.
Instead, he chuckled. He said she shouldn’t sign the deal, but should try to work out another agreement without attorneys: “Lawyers complicate things. Even Scripture says that among Christians we should find agreement.”
The conversation between the aggrieved mother and Pope Benedict XVI’s personal envoy was wiretapped. The tape — as well as the six-page settlement proposal — are key pieces of evidence in a criminal trial opening next month in Milan. Prosecutors allege that Legion lawyers and priests tried to obstruct justice, and extort Martinez’s  family by offering them money to recant testimony to prosecutors in hopes of quashing a criminal investigation into the abusive priest, Vladimir Resendiz Gutierrez.Lawyers for the five suspects declined to comment. The Legion says they have professed innocence. A spokesman said that at the time, the Legion didn’t have in place the uniform child protection policies and guidelines that are now mandatory across the order.
De Paolis is beyond earthly justice — he died in 2017 and there is no evidence he knew of, or approved, the settlement offer before it was made. But the tape and documents seized when police raided the Legion’s headquarters in 2014 show that he had turned a blind eye to superiors who protected pedophiles.
In addition, the evidence shows that when De Paolis first learned about Resendiz’s  crimes in 2011, he approved an in-house canonical investigation but didn’t report the priest to police. And when he learned two years later that other Legion priests were apparently trying to impede the criminal investigation into his crimes, the pope’s delegate didn’t report that either.
And a few hours after he spoke with Martinez, De Paolis opened the Legion’s 2014 assembly where he formally ended the mandate given to him by Benedict to reform and purify the religious order. The Legion had been “cured and cleaned,” he said.
In fact, his mission hadn’t really been accomplished. ___
Benedict had entrusted De Paolis, one of the Vatican’s most respected canon lawyers, to turn the Legion around in 2010, after revelations that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had raped his seminarians, fathered three children and built a cult-like order to hide his crimes.
There had been calls for the Vatican to suppress the Legion. But Benedict decided against it, apparently determining in part that the order was too big and too rich to fail. Instead, he opted for a process of reform, giving De Paolis the broadest possible powers to rebuild the Legion from the ground up and saying it must undergo a profound process of “purification” and “renewal.”
But De Paolis refused from the start to remove any of Maciel’s old guard, who remain in power today. He refused to investigate the cover-up of Maciel’s crimes. He refused to reopen old allegations of abuse by other priests, even when serial rapists remained in the Legion’s ranks, unpunished.
More generally, he did not come to grips with the order’s deep-seated culture of sexual abuse, cover-up and secrecy — and its long record of avoiding law enforcement and dismissing, discrediting and silencing victims. As a result, even onetime Legion supporters now openly question his reform, which was dismissed as ineffective by the Legion’s longtime critics.
“They always try to control victims, minimize them, defame them, accuse them of exaggerating things,” said Alberto Athie, a former Mexican priest who has campaigned for more than 20 years on behalf of clergy sexual abuse victims, including victims of the Legion.
“Then, if they don’t achieve that level of control, they go to the next level, looking for their parents, trying to minimize them or buy them off, silence them. And if that doesn’t work, they go to trial and try to do what they can to win the case,” he said.
Now, victims of these other Legion priests are coming forward in droves with stories of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and how the Legion’s culture of secrecy and cover-up has remained intact.
“They say they’re close to the victims and help their families,” Martinez  told The Associated Press at her home in Milan. “My testimony is this didn’t happen.”___
Martinez, a 54-year-old mother of three, chokes up when she recalls the day she received the phone call from her son’s psychologist. It was March of 2013, and her eldest son had been receiving therapy on the advice of his high school girlfriend. Martinez  thought she was about to learn that she would be a grandmother; she thought her boy had gotten the girl pregnant.
Instead, Dr. Gian Piero Guidetti told Martinez  and her husband that during therapy, their son had revealed that he had been repeatedly sexually molested by Resendiz  starting in 2008, when he was a middle schooler at the Legion’s youth seminary in Gozzano, near Italy’s border with Switzerland. Guidetti, himself a priest, told them he was required by his medical profession to report the crime to prosecutors.
His complaint, and the testimony of Martinez’s  son, sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Resendiz’s  2019 conviction, which was upheld on appeal in January. Resendiz, 43, who was convicted in absentia and is believed to be living in his native Mexico, has until the end of March to appeal the conviction and 6 1/2-year prison sentence to Italy’s highest court. (Efforts by The Associated Press to reach his lawyer were unsuccessful.)
The investigation, however, netted evidence that went far beyond Resendiz’s  own wrongdoing. Documents seized by police and seen by AP in the court file showed a pattern of cover-up by the Legion and the pope’s envoy that stretched from Milan to Mexico, the Vatican to Venezuela and points in between.
Personnel files, for example, made clear Resendiz was known to the Legion as a risk even when he was a teenage seminarian in the 1990s, yet he was ordained a priest anyway in 2006 and immediately sent to oversee young boys at the Gozzano youth seminary.
“He’s a boy with strong sexual impulses and low capacity to control them,” Resendiz’s  novice director, the Rev. Antonio Leon  Santacruz, wrote in an internal assessment on Jan. 9, 1994. “Given his psychological character, he’s inclined to not respect rules without great difficulty and the psychologist thinks it will be difficult for him to undertake consecrated life given he has little respect for rules. He follows them as long as he’s being watched, but as soon as he can, he breaks them and has no remorse.”
A year later, on Resendiz’s  19th birthday, the seminarian wrote a letter to Maciel — addressing it as all Legionaries addressed the man they regarded as a living saint: “Nuestro Padre,” “Our Father.”
“I’m having various problems in the field of purity and the truth is I’m having a hard time, because temptations are coming to me,” he wrote. “I’m praying to the Holy Virgin every day for grace and asking her for strength to not offend again; I say again because I have had the disgrace of falling, but with the help of God I will fight to form that pure, priestly heart.”
When Martinez  saw such letters in the court file, her heart fell.
“My son wasn’t even born yet, she said. “How can you put someone like that in charge of a seminary?”
A Legion spokesman, the Rev. Aaron Smith, said the Legion has overhauled its training process for seminarians since Resendiz’s  era, applying more scrutiny before ordination.
“Things are different today,” he said in emailed response to questions.___
      
While Milan prosecutors first heard about Resendiz’s  pedophilia in March 2013 when the therapist reported it, the crimes were old news to both the Vatican and the Legion.
The Legion has admitted it received a first report of abuse by Resendiz on March 6, 2011, from another boy who had been a student at Gozzano. The Legion says that boy, an Austrian, had first told a Legion priest of Resendiz’s  abuse. That priest recommended he report it to a church ombudsman’s office in Austria that receives abuse complaints, which he did, Smith said.
Separately, the Legion got wind of another possible victim in Venezuela, where Resendiz  had been sent from Gozzano in 2008, after he abused Martinez’s  son.
Italian police were never informed by the Legion or the Vatican. Neither the Vatican nor Italy requires clergy to report suspected child sex abuse.
When police finally did get wind of the case in March 2013, they uncovered elaborate efforts to keep Resendiz’s  crimes quiet. According to one email seized by Italian police — written March 16, 2011, or 10 days after the Austrian claim was first received by the order — a Legion lawyer recommended to one of the Legion’s most powerful behind-the-scenes superiors, the Rev. Gabriel Sotres, that a Legion priest visit with the victim in Austria.
The aim of the visit, prosecutors wrote in summarizing the email exchanges, “was to speak to the [victim’s] older brother and convince him to not tell their parents and not go to police because this could cause serious problems not only for the Legion but also Father Vladimir, all the other priests involved and the victim and his family.”
Smith, the Legion spokesman, didn’t deny the prosecutors’ account but said that “encouraging a child to keep something from their parents or guardians is contrary to our code of conduct.”
Later in 2011, the Legion arranged for Resendiz  to be transferred from Venezuela to Colombia, and prepared a legal strategy to limit the possible damage if the Venezuelan case escalated. The emails were sent to several Legion leaders, including Sotres, who remain in top positions today. In fact, in the Legion’s current leadership assembly under way in Rome to choose new superiors and priorities, at least 13 of the 89 priests were involved in some way in dealing with the Resendiz  scandal, fallout and cover-up, including two priests who are defendants in the upcoming Milan trial.
According to the seized emails, the plan proposed by a Legion lawyer involved reporting only Resendiz’s  name to Venezuelan police to comply with local reporting laws, leaving out that he was a priest, that he was accused of a sex crime against a child, and the name of the Legion, prosecutors said in summarizing the emails. The report would also note that he no longer lived in Venezuela.
The Legion has said Resendiz  was removed from priestly ministry and from his work with young people in Venezuela within days of receiving the initial Austrian report.
But the emails seized indicate that the restrictions weren’t necessarily enforced: One from Dec. 20, 2012, suggests that Resendiz was hearing confessions in schools and celebrating Mass in Colombia, news that prompted the leadership to ultimately recommend he be sent for psychological counseling in Mexico and later assigned to an administrative position “where they don’t know his situation.”
Eventually, as part of the church’s in-house investigation, Resendiz  confessed — but only to the Legion and Vatican authorities, and only about other boys he abused, not Martinez’s  son.
“I sincerely recognize my terrible behavior as a priest,” he wrote the Vatican official in charge of the sex crimes office in 2012, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller.
“Truly I lived in hell when these sad facts occurred. I recognize the gravity of the acts that I committed and I humbly ask the church for forgiveness for these sad and painful facts. I can’t understand how it could have happened, and I recognize that I lacked the courage to admit to the problem and advise my superiors of the danger.”
The Vatican defrocked him on April 5, 2013 — just a few weeks after Italian prosecutors first heard about Martinez’s  son.
By October of that year, the Legion was nearing the end of De Paolis’ mandate and clearly wanted to avoid the possibility that the Resendiz  case could explode publicly and jeopardize the plan to resume their independence from the Vatican.
Martinez  and her family, for their part, were coping with the trauma of her son’s abuse.
“He would have nightmares. He wouldn’t let me touch him …,” Martinez  said. “He couldn’t stand anyone being close to him.”
Once, he was even prevented from throwing himself in front of a subway train.
Martinez  had been in regular touch with the Legion priest closest to the family, the Rev. Luca Gallizia, her husband’s spiritual director. He was serving as the family’s contact with the Legion, after all other priests and members of Martinez’s  Regnum Christi social circle severed contact — apparently on orders from the leadership.
Gallizia traveled to Milan to meet with Martinez  on Oct. 18, 2013, bringing a proposed settlement to compensate the family. They met in a room off the parish playground of the Sant’Eustorgio basilica where Martinez  worked.
When Martinez  read it later that night with her husband, she was shocked.
“It was a second violation, because for all intents and purposes in that letter, they asked us to deny the facts. And for us it was a stab in the back because it was brought to us by our spiritual father. … He knew everything about us, because my husband confided in him. And that made it even more painful.”
The Legion declined to comment on the proposed settlement, citing the upcoming trial.
The document the Legion wanted Martinez’s family to sign states that her son ruled out having been sexually abused by Resendiz and regardless didn’t remember. It said he denied having any phone or text message contact with him, and that his ensuing problems were due to the fact that he left the seminary and was having trouble integrating socially into his new public high school.
The document set out payments for the son’s continuing education and therapy and required “absolute” secrecy. If the family were called to testify, they were to make the same declarations as contained in the settlement — denying the abuse.
A few months later, the Legion realized it had erred in leaving the proposal with Martinez  and proposed a revised settlement acknowledging the abuse occurred. Now, though, it required the family to pay back double the 15,000 euro ($16,300) settlement offer if they violated the confidentiality agreement.
It was then that Martinez  called De Paolis.
“Both my lawyer and I, our jaws dropped,” she told the Vatican cardinal. The pope’s envoy said he was surprised as well.
“Yes, but this, this is how it’s done in Italy,” he said.
The mother would have none of it. “It’s not a very nice agreement, signing a lie,” Martinez  told the cardinal. “Aside from the fact that I don’t want any money, I’m not signing the letter.” 
 
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The United States and Europe appear divided over the health of the transatlantic relationship following a key security conference in Germany over the weekend, attended by hundreds of political and military leaders. Eruopeans accused Washington of ‘rejecting the idea of an international community’ – but the U.S. said the alliance is in good shape. As Henry Ridgwell reports from the Munich conference, there is an emerging disagreement between Western allies over what exactly represents the biggest threat to Western democracy
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