France is ready to go to the World Trade Organization to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to put tariffs on champagne and other French goods in a row over a planned French tax on internet companies, the finance minister said on Sunday.”We are ready to take this to an international court, notably the WTO, because the national tax on digital companies touches U.S. companies in the same way as EU or French companies or Chinese. It is not discriminatory,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on France 3 television.
  
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French President Emmanuel Macron this week faces the first major test of his policy of directly engaging with Russia that has disturbed some European allies, as he hosts a summit seeking progress in ending the Ukraine conflict.Joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron will bring together Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky for their first face-to-face meeting at an afternoon summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Monday.The stakes are high: this will be the first such summit in three years and while diplomats caution against expecting a major breakthrough, a failure to agree concrete confidence-building steps would be seen as a major blow to hopes for peace and also Macron’s personal prestige.Macron, who is pressing ahead with the summit despite crippling public transport strikes at home over contested pension reforms, has invested hugely in efforts to end the conflict in the east of Ukraine that has claimed 13,000 lives since 2014.And he has also placed his bets on a risky strategy to deal directly with Putin, based on the assumption that one day Russia will understand it is in the national interest to see Europe as its long-term strategic partner.”It is an important test for Macron and for the Europeans,” said Michel Duclos, a former ambassador and senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, a French think tank.”He is already very isolated. And if he obtains nothing on Ukraine he is going to be even more isolated,” he added.But he added the Kremlin was “astute enough” to understand that the summit had to be declared a success and Putin was gladdened by Macron’s overtures as he “sees in that a chance to divide the Europeans”.’Threat but also a partner’Macron has adopted an increasingly assertive presence on the international stage in recent months, at a time when Germany is a less imposing diplomatic player as Merkel prepares to leave office.His thoughts were summed up in an explosive interview with The Economist last month, when he declared NATO was brain dead and said Europe needed to have a strategic dialogue with Russia.Examining Russia’s long-term strategic options under Putin, Macron said in the interview that Russia could not prosper in isolation, would not want to be a “vassal” of China and would eventually have to opt for “a partnership project with Europe”.Macron notably described ex-KGB agent Putin as a “child of Saint Petersburg”, the former Russian capital built by Peter the Great as a window onto the West.His comments disturbed newer EU members that want a tough line against their former master Russia like the Baltic States and, in particular, Poland. And they added to a raft of growing tensions between France and Germany.But after a summit of NATO leaders in England earlier this month, Macron was unrepentant and categorical about his strategy of cultivating Russia.”Who is NATO’s enemy? Russia is no longer an enemy. It remains a threat but is also a partner on some subjects. Our enemy today is international terrorism and in particular Islamist terrorism,” he said.’Being a nuisance no strategy’A French diplomatic source argued Russia could not forever pin its strategy on being a “power of disturbance” with policies like its military intervention in Syria to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power or its alliance with NATO member Turkey which has rattled the West.”If having a capacity to be a nuisance is your only lever it is not a lasting and viable strategy,” said the source, adding there was also a “profound Russian concern about being locked into a rivalry with China”.Konstantin Kalachev, director of the Moscow-based Political Expert Group, warned “it would be naive to think Emmanuel Macron can exercise any kind of influence on Vladimir Putin with the aim of bringing Russia closer to the EU.”There is only one person who can influence President Putin. And that is President Putin himself.”In a glimmer of hope for Macron he added: “Mr Putin has no interest that this (Ukrainian) conflict worsens. But he wants any solution to be drawn up according to his conditions”. 
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With its top leader absent, the party of Evo Morales gathered Saturday in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to start choosing its candidates for new elections called after the resignation and exile of the former president amid protests over vote results.Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party is divided almost three weeks after Bolivia’s first indigenous president, prompted by the military and nationwide protests, left for political asylum in Mexico saying he was the victim of a coup d’etat. Critics of the long-ruling leader say he used fraud to win a fourth straight term in office in the Oct. 20 vote.”Evo is not alone”, shouted party militants, mostly from social and indigenous organizations, in a Cochabamba coliseum.The date for the new elections has not yet been set.Morales, who is currently in Cuba for a medical appointment, said via Twitter that “today the people are uniting, organizing and mobilizing to recover democracy and continue the process of change.”MAS president Rimer Agreda said the gathered delegates will vote to punish members who betrayed the party, apparently referring to party members who didn’t back Morales.”We have to give a punishment vote to all (those) who are at the service of the U.S. embassy,” he added. Morales has said that he was ousted with U.S. support.Chamber of Deputies president Sergio Choque said Morales will have final say over the candidates chosen. “We will go (the elections) with new candidates coming from the social sectors.”It was unclear how long the candidate selection process would take.Morales left the Andean country on Nov. 11 for Mexico, a day after his resignation. Sen. Jeanine Anez then assumed the presidency temporarily for 90 days. A consensus of political forces was later reached to call new elections and cancel the Oct. 20 vote, which an Organization of American States report has said with filled with irregularities and manipulation.On Friday, news emerged that Morales had temporarily left Mexico for Cuba. A former aide did not specify whether Morales made the trip for a routine medical checkup or to treat a specific ailment.Morales underwent treatment in Cuba in 2017 for nose, ear and throat complaints. 
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Saturday he still plans to shift the American military’s focus to competing with China and Russia, even as security threats pile up in the Middle East.Esper outlined his strategic goals and priorities in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of government, defense industry and military officials.Esper, who became Pentagon chief in late July, said he is sticking to the national defense priorities set by his predecessor, Jim Mattis, who was sitting in his audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.Since Mattis resigned one year ago in protest of President Donald Trump’s push to withdraw from Syria, the Middle East has become even more volatile. At least 14,000 additional U.S. troops have been sent to the Persian Gulf area since May out of concern about Iranian actions.Syria itself has arguably become a more complex problem for Washington, with Turkish forces having moved into areas in the north where American forces had been partnering with Syrian Kurdish fighters against remnants of the Islamic State extremist group. Also, Iraq is facing civil protests and a violent crackdown by security forces.The deadly shooting at a Navy base at Pensacola, Florida, on Friday by a Saudi Air Force officer could complicate U.S.-Saudi military relations, although Esper said Friday that relations remain strong.Esper this week denied news reports that he was considering sending up to 14,000 more troops to the Middle East, but he acknowledged to reporters Friday that he is worried by instability in Iraq and Iran.In his speech Saturday, Esper made only a passing reference to Iran, citing Tehran’s “efforts to destabilize” the region.
He focused instead on shifting the U.S. military’s focus toward China and Russia — “today’s revisionist powers.” He accused Moscow and Beijing of seeking “veto power” over the economic and security decisions of smaller nations.On Friday, Esper said he realizes that it will be difficult to move resources out of the Middle East to increase the focus on China and Russia.He said he has been studying the force and resource requirements for every area of the globe to determine how to rebalance those resources.”My ambition is and remains to look at how do we pull resources — resources being troops and equipment and you name it” — from some regions and either return them to the United States or shift them to the Asia-Pacific region, he said Friday.”That remains my ambition, but I have to deal with the world I have, and so I gotta make sure at the same time I deter conflict — in this case in the Middle East,” he said. “I want to have sufficient forces there to make sure” the U.S. does not get into an armed conflict with Iran.
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The prospect of Russian interference in Britain’s election flared anew Saturday after the social media platform Reddit concluded that people from Russia had leaked confidential British government documents on Brexit trade talks just days before the general U.K. vote. Reddit said in a statement that it had banned 61 accounts suspected of violating policies against vote manipulation. It said the suspect accounts shared the same pattern of activity as a Russian interference operation dubbed Secondary Infektion that was uncovered earlier this year.  Reddit investigated the leak after the documents became public during the campaign for Thursday’s election, which will determine the country’s future relationship with the European Union. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs. Reddit said it believed the documents were leaked as part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia. We were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination,'' Reddit said. The British government has not challenged the authenticity of the documents. FILE - Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson sits on a train in London, Dec. 6, 2019, on the campaign trail ahead of the general election on Dec. 12.Britain's main opposition party has argued the documents prove that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party is seeking a deal with the United States after Brexit that would drive up the cost of drugs and imperil the state-funded National Health Service. The issue has been a central election theme, largely because the country deeply cherishes the health service, which has suffered under years of austerity. Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the 451 pages of documents, which covered six rounds of preliminary talks between U.S. and U.K. negotiators, proved that Johnson was planning to put the NHSup for sale” in trade talks. Johnson — who was not prime minister for most of the two-year period when the trade talks took place — has rejected Corbyn’s analysis. Britain is currently scheduled to leave the 28-nation EU on January 31. When asked about Reddit’s actions while on a campaign stop in Wales, Corbyn suggested the news was an advanced stage of rather belated conspiracy theories by the prime minister.'' ''When we released the documents, at no stage did the prime minister or anybody deny that those documents were real, deny the arguments that we put forward. And if there has been no discussion with the USA about access to our health markets, if all that is wrong, how come after a week they still haven't said that? he said. ‘Extremely serious’Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC that the government was looking for and monitoring anything that might suggest interference in the British election.  From what was being put on that [Reddit] website, those who seem to know about these things say that it seems to have all the hallmarks of some form of interference,'' Morgan said.And if that is the case, that obviously is extremely serious.” The specter that Russia has meddled in Britain’s electoral process has been raised before. Critics are also questioning the British government’s failure to release a Parliament intelligence committee report on previous Russian interference in the country’s politics. They say it should have been made public before Thursday’s vote. The Times of London reported, without saying how it got the information, that the intelligence report concluded that Russian interference might have affected the 2016 referendum on Britain’s departure from the EU, though the impact was unquantifiable.'' The committee said British intelligence services failed to devote enough resources to countering the threat, and it highlighted the impact of articles posted by Russian news sites that were widely disseminated on social media, the newspaper reported. FILE - The leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, reacts as she speaks at a campaign event in London, Nov. 9, 2019.Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson expressed concern about the new Russian interference claims. All of us should be concerned if a foreign country is trying to interfere in our democracy,” she said. “And that is why it is so appalling that the prime minister is sitting on a report that was written weeks before the general election, that the Security Committee say should be published, into interference in U.K. democracy by foreign countries like Russia.” 
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France’s most serious nationwide work stoppage in decades frustrated weekend travelers Saturday as truckers blocked thoroughfares and vital transportation services continued to operate far below normal capacity.Concern that President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension overhaul would force millions of people to work longer or face less lucrative benefits triggered the union-led strike on Thursday, bringing much of the country to a halt.Truckers blocked roads Saturday in about 10 regions in France to protest a proposed tax hike on diesel fuel for commercial vehicles.Yellow vest protesters, who have taken to the streets on Saturdays over the past year to voice frustration over the high cost of living in France, sought to capitalize on the nationwide strike.Several hundred of them launched a new protest Saturday in Paris and they scuffled with police in the city’s Left Bank district.Travel in France remained problematic Saturday, with only one in 10 regional trains running and one out of six high-speed TGV trains operating.Air travel was returning closer to normal after authorities dropped travel restrictions.More than 800,000 people participated in the first day of demonstrations on Thursday.In response to what they see as an attack on hard-won worker rights, union leaders have promised to continue protesting unless Macron abandons the proposed pension overhaul, which officials admit would force employees to gradually work longer.Unions have also announced another strike on Tuesday (Dec. 10).Officials have given few details about the pension plan, but Macron’s office said Thursday that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would unveil the framework next week after negotiations with unions.The strike is a test of the political prowess of Macron, a former investment banker who won the presidency on the promise to transform France.Macron wants to standardize and simplify the country’s retirement system comprised of 42 pension plans, maintaining it is not financially sustainable or fair.Many workers, particularly teachers, worry Macron’s reform will leave them with less retirement money.With workers living much longer and a large segment of working-age citizens unemployed, analyst Jean Peteaux of Sciences-Po Bordeaux University said France’s pension system is under significant financial pressure.Peteaux also said it is uncertain if the government’s method to address the issue will succeed. 
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Strikes disrupted weekend travel around France on Saturday as truckers blocked highways and most trains remained at a standstill because of worker anger at President Emmanuel Macron’s policies.Meanwhile, yellow vest protesters held their weekly demonstrations over economic injustice in Paris and other cities, under the close watch of police. The marchers appear to be emboldened by the biggest national protests in years Thursday that kicked off a mass movement against the government’s plan to redesign the national retirement system.As the strikes entered a third day Saturday, tourists and shoppers faced shuttered subway lines around Paris and near-empty train stations.Other groups are joining the fray, too.
Nationwide Strike Paralyzes France video player.
Embed” />Copy LinkNationwide Strike Paralyzes FranceTruckers striking over a fuel tax hike disrupted traffic on highways from Provence in the southeast to Normandy in the northwest. A similar fuel tax is what unleashed the yellow vest movement a year ago, and this convergence of grievances could pose a major new threat to Macron’s presidency.The travel chaos is not deterring the government so far, though. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe plainly told the French in a nationwide address Friday: “You’re going to have to work longer.”He will present details of the plan next week. The government says it won’t raise the official retirement age of 62 but the plan is expected to including financial conditions to encourage people to work longer. Philippe did offer one olive branch, saying the changes would be progressive so that they don’t become “brutal.”Macron says the reform, which will streamline a convoluted system of 42 special pension plans, will make the system more fair and financially sustainable.Unions, however, see the plan as a t hreat to hard-fought workers’ rights, and are digging in for what they hope is a protracted strike. They also plan new nationwide retirement protests Tuesday, despite the tear gas and rioting that marred the edges of the Paris march Thursday.In a society accustomed to strikes and workers rights, many people have supported the labor action, though that sentiment is likely to fade if the transport shutdown continues through next week.“I knew it was going to last … but I did not expect it to be that chaotic,” Ley Basaki, who lives in the Paris suburb of Villemomble and struggles to get to and from work in the capital, told The Associated Press on Saturday at the Gare de l’Est train station. “There is absolutely nothing here, nothing, nothing. There is no bus, nothing.”Many travelers are using technology and social networks to find ways around the strike — working from home, using ride-sharing apps and riding shared bikes or electric scooters.But some are using technology to support the strike: A group of activist gamers is raising money via a marathon session on game-streaming site Twitch. Their manifesto says: “In the face of powers-that-be who are hardening their line and economic insecurity that is intensifying in all layers of the population,” they are trying to “occupy other spaces for mobilization and invent other ways of joining the movement.”
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Russian efforts to weaken the West through a relentless campaign of information warfare may be starting to pay off, cracking a key bastion of the U.S. line of defense: the military.While most Americans still see Moscow as a key U.S. adversary, new polling suggests that view is changing, most notably among the households of military members.The second annual Reagan National Defense Survey, completed in late October, found nearly half of armed services households questioned, 46%, said they viewed Russia as ally.Overall, the survey found 28% of Americans identified Russia as an ally, up from 19% the previous year.A sun ray illuminates St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square during a cold winter day in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 11, 2019.Generally, the pollsters found the positive views of Russia seemed to be “predominantly driven by Republicans who have responded to positive cues from [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump about Russia,” according to an executive summary accompanying the results.While a majority, 71% of all Americans and 53% of military households, still views Russia as an enemy, the spike in pro-Russian sentiment has defense officials concerned.“There is an effort, on the part of Russia, to flood the media with disinformation to sow doubt and confusion,” Defense Department spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Carla Gleason told VOA.“This is not only through discordant and inflammatory dialogue but through false narratives designed to illicit sympathetic views,” she said, adding, “we are actively working to expose and counter Russian disinformation whenever possible.”Reagan National Defense SurveyThe Reagan National Defense Survey, conducted on behalf of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, questioned just more than 1,000 adults between Oct. 24 and Oct. 30, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.Concern among U.S. officials runs deep, partly because other surveys have also found a growing willingness in the U.S. to view Russia positively.For example, Paul R. Pillar, Georgetown UniversityOthers fear Russia’s gains in public opinion are symptomatic of a bigger problem that the Kremlin has managed to exploit.“People’s beliefs and perceptions are shaped more by whatever the leaders of their own political tribe say than by ideology, history, or even their own self-interest,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now with Georgetown University.He said, for now though, the gradual change in U.S. perceptions of Russia has had limited impact.“Many Republicans can slavishly follow Trump’s lead on most matters, including the rhetorical line on Russia, but still, say, support defense expenditures designed to maintain strength vis-a-vis Russia,” Pillar said, noting a variety of U.S. sanctions against Moscow are still in place.The U.S. national defense strategy, updated just two years ago, likewise lists Russia along with China, as the prime threats to the U.S.For the most part, the Reagan National Defense Survey found a majority of Americans are in agreement.“When we asked Americans which countries were tops on their list in terms of the threat that they posed to the United States the first was China [28%] and the second was Russia [25%],” said Ronald Reagan Institute Policy Director Rachel Hoff.She also said there was strong sentiment that the U.S. should not cede any ground on the global stage, to Russia or anyone else.“They want America to take the lead when it comes to international events rather than a less engaged posture where our country is reacting to global events,” Hoff told VOA, pointing to a 50% to 33% margin.At the same time, other polls have pointed to a lingering wariness on the part of a majority of Americans when it comes to Russia.A Gallup survey published in February of this year found only 24% of Americans had a positive view of Russia, down from a 44% favorable rating in February of 2013.
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President Donald Trump said Friday in a tweet that he will hold off on designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.Trump said all the work had been completed and he was statutorily ready to issue a declaration but had decided to delay at the request of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holds his daily news conference in Oaxaca, Mexico, Oct. 18, 2019.There was no immediate confirmation from Mexico, but the government had pushed back against Trump’s plan, saying such a step by the U.S. could lead to violations of its sovereignty.“All necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Statutorily we are ready to do so.”“However, at the request of a man who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us, President Andres Manuel (at) LopezObrador — will will temporarily hold off on this designation.”Under pressure from Trump’s threat to impose tariffs, Mexico has pressed thousands of national guard troops into service to help block Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S.In place of designating the cartels as terrorist outfits, Trump said the U.S. and Mexico instead will “step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and every-growing organizations.”Trump had said in a radio interview just last week that he “absolutely” would move ahead with designating the drug cartels as terrorist organizations, attributing American deaths to drug trafficking and other activity by the cartels.“I’ve been working on that for the last 90 days,” Trump said in the interview when host Bill O’Reilly asked whether such a designation would be forthcoming.O’Reilly had asked if Trump would designate the cartels “and start hitting them with drones and things like that?”Trump replied: “I don’t want to say what I’m going to do, but they will be designated.”Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard sought meetings with U.S. government officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ebrard also said on Twitter that he would use diplomacy to “defend sovereignty.”
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Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernandez unveiled his cabinet on Friday evening, laying out his core team days before the center-left leader takes office facing a stalled economy, rising debt fears and painful inflation.Fernandez named Martin Guzman as economy minister, who will need to help steer debt restructuring negotiations with international creditors and the International Monetary Fund over around $100 billion in sovereign debt.Guzman, a young academic and protege of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, is considered an expert in the field of debt restructuring, though he has little hands-on experience in policy making.Matias Kulfas, who previously held government and central bank positions, was named as production minister. Young political scientist Santiago Cafiero, heir to a historic Peronist family, was named Cabinet chief, and former Buenos Aires Governor Felipe Sola was tapped as foreign minister.Peronist Fernandez, who takes over from conservative leader Mauricio Macri, will be sworn into office on Dec. 10.Vice President-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a divisive former president, was not present at the event when Fernandez announced his picks.
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It has been more than two years since Venezuelan authorities arrested a group of CITGO executives, all of them dual U.S.-Venezuelan nationals. The family of one executive, Tomeu Vadell, lives in a small Louisiana town that recently held a vigil to draw attention to the detention. For VOA, Jorge Agobian has more from Lake Charles.
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A court in Moscow has handed popular blogger Yegor Zhukov a three-year suspended sentence after finding him guilty of inciting extremism online in a case condemned as politically motivated. 
 
The Kuntsevo district court announced the verdict Friday as hundreds of supporters of Zhukov, 21, a student at Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, gathered outside the court building in western Moscow. 
 
“The court has established that Zhukov made public calls for extremist activity using the internet,” Judge Svetlana Ukhnaleva said. 
 
Zhukov was arrested in August amid protests that gripped Moscow for weeks this past summer as Russians vented against the country’s repressive political system. 
 
“Of course, this is not an ultimate victory. A big thank you to everyone,” Zhukov said after the verdict was announced. 
 
In his final court appearance, on Wednesday, Zhukov made an impassioned appeal to his supporters — and offered an indictment of Russia’s political system. Economic inequalityRussia’s current political system has fostered economic inequality that, Zhukov said, destroys any opportunity for human prosperity, with the top 10 percent holding 90 percent of the country’s wealth. 
 
“Among them, of course, there are very honorable citizens. But the bulk of this wealth was obtained not by honest labor, for the benefit of people, but by banal corruption,” he said. 
 
Prior to his predawn arrest on August 2, Zhukov had already drawn a sizable audience on YouTube, where he had posted a series of video blogs in which he vented against President Vladimir Putin and promoted opposition protests across the country.  FILE – A wheelchair-bound woman activist surrounded by journalists holds a poster reading, “The Constitution breakers to be brought to justice!” as she talks to police officers during a protest in the center of Moscow, Aug. 17, 2019.In the series of protests that hit Moscow on consecutive weekends during the summer, police detained hundreds of people on various charges. Most were released for misdemeanor violations. 
 
At a different location in the capital Friday, the Tver district court sentenced Nikita Chirtsov, a 22-year-old programmer who took part in an unsanctioned rally on July 27, to serve one year “in a general penal colony.” 
 
Chirtsov was initially fined 12,000 rubles ($185) for violating regulations for holding public events, after which he left Moscow for the Belarusian capital, Minsk. However, Belarusian officials detained him days later on a Russian request and ordered him sent back to Moscow. 
 
Upon his return, Chirtsov was rearrested and charged with assaulting a police officer during the rally and placed in pretrial detention. Chirtsov maintained his innocence throughout the trial, and the police officer involved told the court in November that the suspect “does not deserve imprisonment.” Other cases
 
The Tver district court also fined Pavel Novikov, 32, 120,000 rubles ($1,850) after finding him guilty of assaulting a police officer during the same July 27 rally. 
 
Meanwhile, the Meshchansky district court on Friday handed Vladimir Yemelyanov a two-year suspended sentence after also finding him guilty of assaulting a law officer during the July 27 rally. 
 
Zhukov was initially charged with mass unrest as a result of his participation in the protests, but amid an outcry from his student supporters, prosecutors reclassified the case against him. 
 
The last video he posted before being detained had been viewed more than 300,000 times as of Thursday. Since his arrest, the videos posted to his YouTube channel by his supporters and allies have garnered hundreds of thousands more.
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Britons vote next Thursday in the country’s third general election in under four years, with pollsters and politicians warning it isn’t going to be easy to forecast the outcome. As the clock ticks toward the most consequential vote in a generation, the battle for Downing Street appears to be coming down once again to the two main storied parties  Labor and the Conservatives, say analysts, who note that voters have never held the leaders of either group in such high disdain as they do now.The fracturing of the two dominant parties, the revival of the country’s perennial third party, the Liberal Democrats, as well as the formation of a new anti-European Union party and the scrambling of traditional party allegiances, was adding too many variables for accurate prediction, the analysts cautioned, made more complicated by the country’s first past-the-post-voting system. This is where the candidate with the majority of the votes becomes the winner.One opinion poll after another and television debate after television debate have brought home how distrusting the British public has become of both the ruling Conservatives’ Boris Johnson and Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson sits on a train in London, Dec. 6, 2019, on the campaign trail ahead of the general election on Dec. 12.Johnson is seen widely as an opportunist who will say anything to remain at No. 10 Downing Street but who doesn’t mean what he says and doesn’t say what he means. His public representation for being economical with the truth stretches back to when he was fired as a journalist by The Times newspaper for making up quotes.Corbyn is viewed as more in touch than Johnson with the trials and tribulations of ordinary people, but is judged an impracticable far-left figure from a bygone era whose plan to re-nationalize a chunk of the economy would likely bankrupt the country and who promises far more than can be delivered when it comes to redistributing wealth and reinvesting in Britain’s crumbling public services.Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks during a press conference in London, Dec. 6, 2019, ahead of the general election on Dec. 12.Corbyn’s fudge on Brexit — in which he wants to renegotiate yet another exit deal with the European Union and then hold a second referendum while remaining neutral on the plebiscite — has provoked derision from studio audiences.Johnson, too, has faced ridicule in TV studios as well as snubs on the streets when campaigning. “Is that a lie again?” queried an irate Yorkshire woman when he visited flood-hit parts of Britain last month and faced a barrage of criticism from furious locals over Conservative promises of cash aid that had amounted to nothing. In vain he tried to engage some in conversation. “You’ve not helped us … I don’t know what you’re here today for,” sniped one woman, who insisted he get out of her way.Mid-week, fast food giant Burger King decided to use the election to poke fun at Johnson’s reputation for misrepresentation with a new advertisement slapped on the side of London buses, mocking his Brexit promises. “ANOTHER WHOPPER ON THE SIDE OF A BUS. MUST BE AN ELECTION,” the ad declared, a tongue-in-cheek reference both to Burger King’s signature burger, the Whopper, and to political lies.”With a week to go before the election, the central issue seems to come down to trust,” according to The Guardian columnist Gary Younge. “For the Conservatives it is about whether people trust what they say; for Labor, it is about whether voters trust that it can do what it says. The challenge for the Tories (Conservatives) goes all the way to the top,” he added.People attend a “Stop the Brexit landslide” rally in London, Dec. 6, 2019.Many voters do not rate either of the main leaders so they must choose their least worst option, the “lesser of two evils,” say analysts.Conservative strategists hope the distrust voters harbor for Corbyn and Johnson will cancel out each other and that in the end they will win through and maintain their seven-point lead over Labor by garnering all the pro-Brexit vote. They are banking on the pro-EU vote fracturing between Labor and the Liberal Democrats, depriving Corbyn of sufficient seats to form a parliamentary majority or enough seats to cobble together a coalition government with Scotland’s nationalists, who are likely to make major gains north of the border with England.The Conservatives have stayed rigidly on message, trying to make the election as much about Brexit as possible and marketing the fact that they will take Britain out of Europe by the end of January, if they form the next government. Their discipline is working to make sure they are seen as the only real political vehicle for Brexit to happen and the challenge from the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage is collapsing.Nigel Farage, Leader of Britain’s Brexit Party poses after speaking on stage at the launch of their policies for the General Election campaign, in London, Nov. 22, 2019.Farage’s party is polling at about 5 percent and midweek, three of the party’s high-profile members urged voters to back the Conservatives, if they want “Brexit to be delivered,” angering Farage.Conservative strategists are also banking on Britons not wanting another deadlocked parliament and that Brexit exhaustion will persuade even pro-EU Conservatives to back Johnson on the grounds that the Brexit mess needs now to be brought to a conclusion and that if Johnson isn’t returned to Downing Street the political impasse will merely be prolonged.The polls in the final days of campaigning have narrowed, with the Conservatives’ lead almost dropping from 13 percent  to 9 or 7 percent, but that is not enough to give Labor much hope of overtaking the Conservatives. Labor’s support in its heartland districts of the north, many of which backed leaving Europe in the 2016 Brexit referendum, is also looking increasingly shaky.But tactical voting by pro-EU voters to upset the Conservatives is a wild card and could upend polling predictions — two former prime ministers, Labor’s Tony Blair and the Conservatives’ John Major, both of whom want Britain to remain in the EU — have been urging Britons to vote tactically in constituencies to deny Johnson a parliamentary majority. Pro-EU organizations have created interactive electoral maps to encourage tactical voting.More people than ever before are expected to vote tactically when a divided Britain has its say on Dec. 12 after more than three years of Brexit uncertainty, according to a Sunday Times poll with up to 6 to 10 percent of its readers thinking about voting tactically.
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One of France’s biggest demonstrations in recent history continued Friday, with unions vowing to protest until the government backs down on planned pension reforms.Metro, rail and air service were severely disrupted again Friday, as France marked its second day of nationwide protests against a planned overhaul of the pension system.On Thursday, more than 800,000 people took to the streets across the country in a mass show of anger. Their numbers were more than double those of last year’s yellow-vests — although that protest movement hopes to revive on the back of this current discontent.Protesters hide behind a wooden board and an umbrella during a demonstration against the pension overhauls, in Nantes, Dec. 5, 2019, as part of a national general strike.Many of the current demonstrations have been peaceful, but in Paris, some were marked by clashes between police and so-called Black Bloc anarchists. The strike also shuttered schools and many tourist attractions.Pension reform is an explosive issue here. President Emmanuel Macron wants to standardize and simplify the current system comprised of myriad plans, retirement ages and benefits. The last major reform effort in 1995 triggered three weeks of paralyzing strikes — with the government backing off on the most ambitious changes.With people living much longer and a chunk of working-age French unemployed, analyst Jean Peteaux of Sciences-Po Bordeaux university says France’s pension system faces serious financial strains. He says it remains to be seen whether the government’s method will work.Yves Veyrier, general secretary of the Force Ouvriere union, told French radio it was important the mobilization continues. But he and other unions are also opting for the traditional path of negotiations with the government.
 
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says people have the right to strike — but those who want to work should be allowed to do so. Unions have announced another strike next Tuesday. 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel entered the hallowed grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz on Friday as she began her first ever visit to the most notorious site of the atrocities that Adolf Hitler’s regime inflicted on Europe.
                   
Merkel also brought a donation of 60 million Euros ($66.6 million). The money will go to a fund to conserve the physical remnants of the site – the barracks, watchtowers and personal items like shoes and suitcases of those killed.
                   
Together, those objects endure as evidence of German atrocities and as one of the world’s most recognizable symbols of humanity’s capacity for evil. But they also are deteriorating under the strain of time and mass tourism, prompting a long-term conservation effort.
                   
That donation to the Auschwitz Foundation comes in addition to 60 million euros that Germany donated when the fund was launched a decade ago, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.
                   
That brings the total German donation to 120 million euros and makes Germany by far the most generous of 38 countries that have contributed. As with the earlier donation, half comes from the federal government and half from the German states, an acknowledgement of the German nation’s responsibility.
                   
Since becoming chancellor in 2005, Merkel has paid her respects at other Nazi concentration camps, and she has been five times to Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial Yad Vashem.
                   
Still, Poland’s Foreign Ministry called her visit “historic,” in an obvious acknowledgement of the unique status Auschwitz has in the world’s collective memory. The ministry also noted that it was just the third visit of an incumbent head of a German government.
                   
Nazi German forces killed an estimated 1.1 million people at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex during their occupation of Poland during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews transported from across Europe to be killed in gas chambers. But tens of thousands of others were killed there too, including Poles, Soviet prisoners of war and Roma, or Gypsies. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945.
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A nationwide strike about planned pension reforms that has paralyzed most of France enters its second day Friday.Concern that the proposed pension overhaul would force millions of people to work longer or have less lucrative benefits has prompted the strike, bringing much of the country to a halt.Tens of thousands of workers in France walked off the job Thursday as unions staged a nationwide strike against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to reform the country’s pension system.The strike shut down transportation, forced most schools to close, left hospitals understaffed and basic government services unmet.Largely peaceful demonstrations were held in Paris and in more than two dozen cities throughout the country.Protesters hide behind a wooden board and an umbrella during a demonstration against the pension overhauls, in Nantes, Dec. 5, 2019, as part of a national general strike.Violence erupted, however, near Place de la Republique in eastern Paris, where thousands of protesters had gathered. Some protesters set fire to a construction trailer and police responded by firing tear gas, witnesses said.Police also used tear gas against protesters in the northwestern city of Nantes and in the southeastern city of Lyon.Union leaders have promised to continue protesting unless Macron abandons the proposed pension overhaul, which officials admit would force employees to gradually work longer.Officials have given few details about the plan, but Macron’s office said Thursday that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would unveil the framework next week after negotiations with unions.The strike is a test of the political prowess of Macron, a former investment banker who won the presidency on the promise to transform France.
 
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Russia and Turkey are working on a contract for the delivery of a new batch of Russian S-400 missile systems, the Interfax news agency cited a senior official at a Russian military cooperation agency as saying on Friday.Such a deal would be likely to further strain Ankara’s relations with Washington which has suspended Turkey from the U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jet program in which it was a producer and buyer, to penalize it for buying S-400 batteries this year.“We’re gradually working on this question. Most importantly, both sides are intent on continuing cooperation in this sphere,” the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation was quoted as saying.The official, Dmitry Shugaev, said he thought there was a “fairly high likelihood” Turkey and Russia would sign a contract for the delivery of an additional batch of S-400s next year.The head of Russia’s state arms exporter told RIA news agency on Nov. 26 that Moscow and Ankara were actively discussing Ankara taking up an option in its original missile contract for it to receive more S-400 systems.
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Hundreds of thousands of people went on strike in cities across France, causing a shutdown of public transport and drastically reducing teaching and hospital staff Thursday. Public and private sector workers are protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms that include extending minimum retirement age and rewarding employees for each day worked. VOA’S Zlatica Hoke reports.
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President Donald Trump’s former ambassador to Russia said Vladimir Putin is likely “joyful” about the renewed prominence of a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine was responsible for meddling in the 2016 election, which experts consider Russian disinformation.“He’s probably joyful that he has the world talking about something he may have been behind,” Jon Huntsman Jr. said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the way they operate in Moscow, to try to sow seeds of discontent between the United States and Kyiv.”Huntsman is running for his old job as Utah governor after leaving the Moscow post, which he said likely had him spending as much time with the Russian president as any other American.Trump continues to say Ukraine was behind interference in the 2016 election as he faces an impeachment inquiry related to allegations he pressured the country into investigating his political rivals. The FBI has confirmed Russia was behind the meddling.‘No question’ Russia meddledThe Republican agreed that there’s “no question” Russia meddled while saying he didn’t have direct access to all information on Ukraine. It could happen again in 2020, from Russia or a handful of players, and the U.S. may not be prepared.“Let’s just say the capabilities are there to wreak havoc on our most prized institution of democracy,” he said. “We need to be prepared for it, and I don’t know if we are.”He said he’s especially concerned about state and local election systems, where officials might not have the resources or information to know about threats.The moderate conservative hasn’t quite endorsed Trump, who is less popular in Utah than in many other conservative states, but said he would back him in 2020.“He has maintained a strong economy and we are not at war … we hear a lot about the downside. I think the election will focus more on the upside,” he said, adding that an election is better than impeachment on deciding whether the president should stay in office.Utah governorAs he looks for a comeback in state politics, Huntsman downplayed the idea that becoming Utah governor again would be a platform between higher-profile roles, saying he’d serve out a four-year term if elected.First elected in 2004, he was a popular leader who oversaw a period of economic growth and tax reform and had recently won a second term when he stepped down in 2009 to serve as U.S. ambassador to China in the Obama administration.Huntsman mounted a short-lived run for president during the 2012 cycle, and five years later went abroad again as ambassador to Russia. Now, Huntsman said he’s ready to return to Utah.“If I wanted to be secretary of state, I would have stayed where I was,” he said. “No call is going to take me away from doing the work of the people here in Utah.”
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Union leaders and Colombian government representatives met on Thursday for the second time this week but failed to reach an agreement to end protests against President Ivan Duque’s economic and social policies.The meeting took place just one day after a national strike organized by unions, students and advocacy groups drew thousands of protesters.”We remain deeply at odds with the government over the make up of the discussions,” Diogenes Orjuela, the head of the Central Union of Workers (CUT), told journalists after the meeting.”Furthermore, the government has taken a step back by labeling the discussions as exploratory. We continue to hold that this is a table for negotiations between the government and the national strike committee, to discuss the 13 demands that have been raised,” he said.Protest leaders’ demands include that the government take more action to halt the killings of human rights activists, better implement a peace deal with leftist rebels and dissolve the ESMAD riot police, whom they accuse of excessive force during the protests.FILE – Members of the Indigenous Guard and students march in an anti-government protest in Bogota, Colombia, Nov. 29, 2019.Protesters also oppose a Duque tax reform which would cut duties on businesses, and reject other proposals Duque denies supporting, like alleged efforts to raise the pension age and cut the minimum wage for young people.The government on Thursday asked protest leaders to make their demands more specific.”The government needs to know the full depth of these demands so that it can discuss what agreements can and cannot be achieved,” said presidency official Diego Molano. “What we cannot do is build a negotiation based on 13 different topics without clearly knowing each demand.”The protests, which have been largely peaceful, saw looting and attacks against transport systems in the first few days, leading the mayors of Cali and Bogotá to institute curfews.Five people have died in connection with the protests, which followed upheaval in other Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia.The government and protest leaders have agreed to a further meeting next week. 
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Big oil companies operating in Mexico have launched a drive to convince leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to resume auctions of oil and gas contracts he has branded a failure in reviving the industry.Chevron, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, among other firms in Mexico’s Association of Hydrocarbon Companies (Amexhi), say they have met output targets and investment pledges worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the initial phases of their contracts.”We’ve been complying (with contractual obligations), and by any metric you look at, we’ve been successful,” Amexhi President Alberto de la Fuente told reporters this week.Now they want the government to restart the auctions initiated under a 2013-2014 energy opening, including those to select partners for state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).FILE – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during his daily morning press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, Nov. 21, 2019.Lopez Obrador has strongly criticized the reform, which was enacted under his predecessor and opened the door to over 100 exploration and production contracts for oil companies.Having canceled auctions scheduled for 2019, he points out the reform has failed to lift crude output to the previous government’s target of 3 million barrels per day (bpd).Production is below 1.7 million bpd, the lowest in decades.The government said it will not do more until seeing “tangible” results, without specifying what that means.The president also suspended auctions for the heavily-indebted Pemex to seek private partnerships known as “farmouts.”Amexhi argues output is a poor yardstick because only 29 contracts are in the production stage out of 111 awarded through 2018. The rest still need time to finish exploratory drilling and studies before beginning commercial production, it says.FILE – Alberto de la Fuente, CEO of Shell in Mexico, gestures during Forbes Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 18, 2017.”What we need is to sit down with the energy ministry, with the government and understand which metrics are important to them,” said de la Fuente, a former energy regulator who is now Shell’s country manager in Mexico.Some voices within Lopez Obrador’s administration are trying to convince the president to resume auctions, two officials told Reuters. The task is hard, they said, because he believes the state should hold a prominent role in the sector.Meanwhile, private and foreign oil firms have spent about $11 billion in investment, taxes and payments to Pemex, and plan to invest another $37 billion in the coming years, Amexhi says.”We’re looking to raise awareness in the government about how imperative it is to resume tenders,” said a director of a foreign oil company in Mexico who requested anonymity.”If not, it’s going to be impossible for production to pick up given the state Pemex is in and because the government is racing against the clock to meet its own goals,” he said.Lopez Obrador has pledged to reverse more than a decade of falling crude output at Pemex. The firm’s exploration and production budget has been crimped by its debt, the largest of any oil company in the world.Experts say it will be impossible for Pemex to reach its output goal of 1.8 million bpd by the end of 2019 after October closed with production at 1.66 million bpd.In the private sector, Amexhi expects production to reach nearly 50,000 bpd this year and jump to 280,000 bpd by 2024. But it argues new auctions could produce even faster results.Carlos Salazar, head of powerful Mexican business lobby CCE that helped resolve a dispute between the government and several energy infrastructure firms, said he supports Amexhi’s efforts.”Let’s set the milestones so that everyone, the public opinion, knows the objectives,” he said. 
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