Tensions between Turkey and Russia escalated Thursday with the killing of the two Turkish soldiers in a Syrian airstrike. Moscow, which backs the Damascus government, accused Ankara of supporting terrorists in Syria.  In a statement, the Turkish Defense Ministry said the airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province also injured five people. The report didn’t identify who was responsible for the attack, but it said immediate retaliation was carried out against “more than 50 [Syrian] regime targets,” including tanks and artillery. Turkish presidential communications director Fahrettin Altun pointed directly at Damascus. “Turkish soldiers in Idlib, there to establish peace and manage humanitarian aid operations,” were killed by “an attack carried out by the [Syrian] regime,” tweeted Altun. Damascus so far has not commented. But the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its air force had carried out airstrikes against Turkish-backed rebels in Idlib, who broke through the lines of Damascus forces.  Neither Moscow nor Ankara gave details of where Thursday’s airstrikes occurred. Turkish-backed rebel fighters prepare for an attack near the village of Neirab in Idlib province, Syria, Feb. 20, 2020. Two Turkish soldiers were killed Thursday by an airstrike in northwestern Syria, according to Turkey’s Defense Ministry.Rebels secure villageThursday, Turkish-backed rebels launched a series of assaults in Idlib to push back Damascus forces. Turkish media said the rebels had secured a key village on the strategic M4 highway. In the last few weeks, Turkey deployed large amounts of military hardware and soldiers into Idlib to prevent Damascus forces from overrunning the last rebel stronghold. “We will end the aggression of the regime in Idlib,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his parliamentary party on Wednesday. “These are the last days for the regime to withdraw; we are giving our last warnings.” Erdogan is demanding that Damascus forces withdraw behind 12 Turkish military observation posts set up under a 2018 Sochi agreement with Moscow, which created a de-escalation zone in Idlib. Ankara fears if Damascus captures Idlib, it will trigger an exodus of refugees into Turkey. “I am sure Erdogan would undertake a military operation,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, “because he needs a success domestically to prevent the migration. The biggest, biggest issue is the possible 2 million migration into Turkey.” FILE – Turkish military vehicles are seen in Hazano near Idlib, Syria, Feb. 11, 2020.’Deeper and deeper into war’Thursday’s killing of the two Turkish soldiers followed the deaths of 13 others at the hands of Damascus forces earlier this month. “It appears we are getting deeper and deeper into war with the Syrian military, and who knows what can come out of that,” said international relations teacher Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. The escalating violence came as Turkish-Russian diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict remained deadlocked. While Ankara and Moscow support rival sides in the Syrian civil war, the two have been cooperating to try to end the conflict. That cooperation is the impetus for a deepening of bilateral relations, a relationship that is causing alarm among Turkey’s traditional Western allies. However, Idlib is now seen as threatening the Turkish-Russian rapprochement. “There is a break of confidence, definitely,” said Bagci.  “The statements from Turkey have created a great danger to the Russian relationship,” he added. But statements by Dimitri Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “indicate they are not afraid of Turkey and they will continue to support Damascus. There is no retreat, neither in political nor military terms.” But Moscow is continuing to reach out to Ankara diplomatically. “We are ready to work at any level, including at the highest level,” Peskov said Wednesday. “So far, I have not seen any instructions to prepare the presidential meeting.” FILE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Istanbul, Jan. 8, 2020.Erdogan-Putin relationshipErdogan and Putin have developed what is widely seen as a good working relationship that is understood to have facilitated the deepening bilateral ties. While the much-touted personal chemistry of the two leaders helped to resolve previous impasses, analysts suggest differences over Idlib may be irreconcilable. “The trust between Putin and Erdogan is one thing,” said Bagci. “But the political interests differ, and who is going to make the compromise is an open question. The Americans taking Turkey’s side are strengthening Tayyip Erdogan’s position toward Putin. Putin is very careful toward Erdogan because their relationship is not as strong as it used to be.” U.S. President Donald Trump backed Erdogan’s Idlib stance during a telephone call earlier this month. U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained, in part because of Ankara’s deepening ties with Moscow. Washington’s latest overtures are being viewed with suspicion. Skepticism”If the U.S. shows this approach because of the problem we have with Russia, this sincerity is questioned,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday. “But we can say that they are sincere when they approach us like a true ally.” Analyst Ozel said statements from U.S. and NATO authorities have indicated increasing support for Turkey, “and Turkey is edging closer and closer to the United States.” Ankara is looking for more than diplomatic support, however, with reports that it requested that America deploy its Patriot missile system to offer protection of Turkish forces from airstrikes in Idlib — a sign that Ankara could be preparing for the risk of further clashes in Syria. “It will be a worst-case scenario. Theoretically, it is possible. But we have to try diplomatically until the end. But if military clashes happen with Russia, then the game is over,” said Bagci. 
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European leaders argued into the early hours of Friday about how to spend and share some 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) over the next seven years. Their first summit since Britain quit the EU last month has been bruising, long — and so far inconclusive.Gaps and resentments between wealthy and poorer members quickly surfaced as presidents and prime ministers from the European Union’s 27 countries gathered Thursday in Brussels. The unity they showed during four years of Brexit talks was nowhere to be seen as they wrangled over the EU’s future priorities and who should pay for its ambitions.From farm subsidies to beefed-up border security or unprecedented climate investment, every EU leader wants the continent-wide budget to fund their own national priorities. Outside the summit center, farmers rolled tractors down the street to push their demands for sufficient funds.“I don’t plan to put my signature to this,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said of the latest compromise budget proposal. All came in for the long haul, and Rutte was prepared, carrying a biography of Polish composer Frederic Chopin to get him through the long hours of negotiations.European Council President Charles Michel arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Feb. 20, 2020.Each leader laid out priorities at a collective round-table meeting, and then EU Council President Charles Michel met with each leader one by one to discuss their grievances and demands, officials said.The summit stretched past midnight with no breakthrough in sight.The Greek leader wants a bigger budget. The Finnish leader wants it smaller. France wants more money for joint defense. Lithuania wants more money for farmers.Meanwhile, concerns are growing about potential conflicts of interest that could see hundreds of millions of euros in funds granted to companies linked to some of the very people deciding how the money should be spent.Diplomats and number-crunchers have worked on the budget for years but the issues are so divisive that the leaders’ summit might last into Saturday and still end without a result.“There are lot of concerns, priorities, and interests,” Michel said. “I’m well aware that the final steps that must be taken to find a compromise are always the most difficult.”German Chancellor Angela Merkel also said she hoped “we get at least a good deal further,” but was forthright in defending the wealthy nations that put more into the shared EU budget than they get out of it. “For net contributors the balance is not right yet.”The EU nations need to regroup after Britain’s departure three weeks ago, and a show of unity on their common budget could help in that regard.“With Great Britain leaving, it is a clear signal we have to give to our citizens that Europe is alive and well and we can continue functioning,” said Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins.Prospects of that don’t look good.Britain’s exit means the loss of up to 75 billions euros ($81 billion) in net contributions to the budget, and how to make up for that is causing friction. Leaders of rich nations don’t want to have to pay more into that common EU pot, and those from poorer member states are angry at the prospect of receiving less money from the EU.Even if a trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) sounds like a lot, it actually amounts to about 1% of the gross national income of the 27 nations combined. The debate is over some 0.3 percentage points.Michel came into the summit with a draft budget at 1.074% of EU gross national income. The parliament wants 1.3%, while the EU’s powerful executive arm, the European Commission, prefers 1.11%.Farmers and tractors gather outside of an EU summit in Brussels, Feb. 20, 2020. Baltic farmers on Thursday were calling for a fair allocation of direct payments under the European Union’s Common Agricultural PolicyIt’s not just about convincing reluctant member countries to stump up funds. The European Parliament must also ratify any final budget agreement and the EU lawmakers are not happy.“At the moment, we remain 230 billion euros ($248 billion) apart,” European Parliament President David Sassoli said this week.Ahead of the negotiations, the 27 member nations are roughly divided into two main camps. The so-called “Frugal Four” of Austria, Denmark, Rutte’s the Netherlands and Sweden versus the “Friends of Cohesion,” a group of mainly central and eastern European nations who want to see the continued flow of “cohesion funds,” money earmarked to help develop poorer regions.The frugal four would like the budget to drop to as low as 1% of gross national income and say that with the loss of Britain the EU has to cut its coat according to its cloth.French President Emmanuel Macron wants to go the other way.“’It would be unacceptable to have a Europe that compensates the departure of the British by reducing spending.”Complicating things further is the level of global uncertainty beyond the continent. While climate change was largely a technical matter during the last budget negotiations seven years ago, this time the EU is planning to spend a quarter of its budget on green issues, hoping to set an example for governments around the world.
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A former Russian police officer told a court his superior ordered him to plant drugs on investigative journalist Ivan Golunov, whose arrest last summer sparked outrage.Denis Konovalov, who was fired in connection with his arrest on fabricating drug charges against Golunov, admitted he framed the journalist but said he did so at the behest of Igor Lyakhovets, who is also on trial.Aleksei Kovrizhkin, Lyazovets’ lawyer, said his client is innocent and that prosecutors are pressuring Konovalov.“Judging by his look, he is very despondent. I don’t know what path they found to him, but he is broken,” Kovrizhkin told Open Media.Lyazovets claims he was on vacation when Golunov was arrested, but said his subordinates consulted with him by phone about the case.FILE – Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov greets colleagues and supporters as he leaves an Investigative Committee building in Moscow, Russia, June 11, 2019.Golunov was arrested on June 6 in Moscow on charges of attempting to sell a large amount of illegal drugs just as he was preparing to publish an investigation about corruption in the nation’s funeral industry.The fabricated arrest quickly unraveled after police posted photos of drug paraphernalia supposedly from inside Golunov’s home.Journalists and friends who had been to Golunov’s residence quickly recognized the photos were fake and began staging pickets.Golunov was released from house arrest on June 11 after the country’s interior minister announced that criminal charges against him would be dropped, and a day before his supporters had planned a protest. 
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Thursday vowed not to bow to government “repression” after counterintelligence military agents raided his detained uncle’s home, an action Guaido called a “farce.”“If they think we are going to retreat from the path that we have taken and are going to take, they are mistaken. We will move forward,” tweeted Guaido, recognized by more than 50 countries, including the U.S., as Venezuela’s interim president.The wife and two children of his uncle, Juan Marquez,  were inside the apartment as the raid occurred.Joel Garcia, lawyer of Juan Marquez, uncle of Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido, talks on the phone in front of a Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence vehicle in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb.20, 2020.AFP journalists witnessed General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence agents being permitted into the apartment building’s car park by hooded uniformed men. Outside of the complex, Delsa Solorzano, an opposition lawmaker, called the search “completely illegal.”“I tried to enter and the DGCIM officials didn’t let me in,” one of Marquez’s lawyers, Joel Garcia, told reporters after being barred from entering the premises. “When they don’t allow a trusted lawyer to accompany them it’s because they came to plant evidence.”Marquez was arrested on Feb. 11 when returning to Venezuela with Guaido after an international tour meant to generate support to oust President Nicolas Maduro. Marquez was arrested on charges that he was smuggling explosives into Venezuela on their flight from Portugal.The United States, seen as Guaido’s most powerful supporter, has warned of repercussions if Guaido were arrested. The State Department said Marquez is being held on “preposterous charges.”An attorney for Marquez said actions taken against his client are intended to intimidate Guaido and “break his will” in challenging Maduro. 
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Britain and the United States joined Georgia on Thursday in blaming Russia for a large-scale cyber attack last year that knocked thousands of Georgian websites offline and disrupted national television broadcasts. State, private and media websites were taken out by the attack on Oct. 28, including those belonging to the Georgian president’s office and two private television stations.
Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said the cyberattack, which defaced websites to display an image of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, was planned and carried out by the Russian military.The attack “was intended to harm Georgian citizens and government structures by disrupting and paralyzing the functionality of various organizations, thereby causing anxiety among the general public,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimer Konstantinidi.In supporting statements, Britain and the United States attributed the attack specifically to a unit of Russia’s military intelligence service, commonly known as the GRU.
Western countries have accused the GRU of orchestrating a spree of destructive in cyberattacks in recent years, including hacks that took down parts of the Ukrainian energy grid and crippled businesses worldwide in 2017.Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations. The Russian defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday’s announcement.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the attack “directly affected the Georgian population, disrupted operations of several thousand Georgian government and privately-run websites and interrupted the broadcast of at least two major television stations.”Britain’s foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said: “The GRU’s reckless and brazen campaign of cyberattacks against Georgia, a sovereign and independent nation, is totally unacceptable.”The attack is the latest alleged attempt by Russia to undermine and destabilize the former Soviet Republic of Georgia since a short-lived war between the two countries in 2008 over a breakaway Georgian region.
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido says military police raided the home of his uncle, a week after the relative was arrested on his return with Guaido to Venezuela.
    
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said military police raided the home of his uncle early Thursday, a week after the relative was arrested on his return with Guaido to Venezuela.
    
On Twitter, Guaido described the search of Juan Jose Marquez’s home as another act of persecution by a “cowardly dictatorship” that will not deter the opposition movement.
    
An Associated Press journalist saw a police vehicle parked in front of the Caracas apartment building where Marquez lives. An officer in a black mask later drove off in the vehicle.
    
Marquez traveled to Venezuela with Guaido, who had completed an international tour in which he sought support for the opposition’s campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
    
Marquez was promptly arrested and accused of transporting explosives, an allegation that Guaido has dismissed as absurd.
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The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called on Russian authorities to reopen a criminal investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the former Russian opposition politician who was killed almost five years ago near the Kremlin.The OSCE said shortcomings in Russia’s original investigation left many questions unanswered.“His death was a tragedy for Russia and had a strong impact on the political climate, spreading fear and possibly opening up for further attacks and repression,” the OSCE said in a Feb. 20 report.Nemtsov was shot dead at close range on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, near the Kremlin in central Moscow, on Feb. 27, 2015.In June 2017, a Russian court sentenced former Chechen battalion leader Zaur Dadayev to 20 years in prison for killing Nemtsov.Four other Chechens were found guilty of involvement in the killing and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 11 to 19 years.FILE – Shadid Gubashev (L), Anzor Gubashev (C), and Zaur Dadayev (R) are seen during the reading of their sentences at their trial in the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, July 13, 2017.Critics, including relatives and colleagues of Nemtsov, say Russian authorities failed to determine who ordered the killing.Some have expressed suspicions that the killing was ordered by someone within the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.The OSCE report, prepared by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s special rapporteur, Margareta Cederfelt, said “organizers and instigators” of Nemtsov’s killing must be held accountable to “instill hope among those in Russia who continue to risk persecution and attacks to fight for democracy and the rule of law.”Despite calls both from within Russia and from other countries and from the international community to make sure Mr. Nemtsov’s murder was thoroughly, effectively, and transparently investigated so that both perpetrators, organizers, and initiators were held accountable, the official investigation and the following trial has been subject to severe criticism,” Cederfelt said.Cederfelt cited “important work” by independent researchers and experts “in filling in the blanks” left by Russia’s official investigation.FILE – The OSCE’s Margareta Cederfelt speaks during a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nov. 29, 2018.“They have particularly pointed to the potential involvement of the Chechen leadership and/or security services, even suggesting that the Russian president may be the initiator,” Cederfelt said.Cederfelt said that given the shortcomings of the official Russian probe, “such arguments can neither be dismissed nor confirmed.”The killing of Nemtsov — a reformist politician, former deputy prime minister, and sharp critic of Putin — was condemned internationally.Critics say Nemtsov’s killing has highlighted the dangers faced by Russians who oppose the Kremlin.Supporters of Nemtsov, including members of the country’s opposition, plan to hold a mass rally in Moscow on Feb. 29 to mark the fifth anniversary of his death.Some opposition supporters also plan to use the rally to protest proposed amendments to the country’s constitution that critics say are aimed at extending Putin’s grip on power after his current presidential term ends in 2024. 
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Google is attempting to make sure people know exactly what they’re signing up for when they use its online services — though that will still mean reading a lengthy document.The company updated its terms of service on Thursday — its largest update to the general use contract since 2012 — in response to a pair of court orders in Europe.Google has been updating its policies and tweaking what is and isn’t allowed on its sites for the past couple of years as scrutiny of the tech industry heats up across the U.S. and Europe. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other digital companies have been forced under a spotlight as regulators and customers examine just how much the companies know about their users and what they do with that information.Facebook last year updated its terms of service to clarify how it makes money from user data.Google says it hasn’t changed anything significant in the document, but rather used plain language to describe who can use its products and what you can post online.“Broadly speaking, we give you permission to use our services if you agree to follow these terms, which reflect how Google’s business works and how we earn money,” the document reads.The document is now about 2,000 words longer than it was before, in part because Google included a list of definitions and expanded it to cover Google Drive and Chrome. The new terms take effect in March.Google’s privacy policy is separate and was substantially updated in 2018 after Europe enacted broad-reaching privacy laws.The company also separately updated its “About Google” page to explain how it makes money from selling advertisements, often informed by the vast amount of customer information it collects.As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, Google also announced it is switching the service provider for U.K. customers from one based in Ireland to its main U.S. provider. The company says that it won’t change how U.K. customers’ data is protected or used. 
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Bolivia’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation into “electoral fraud” against former president Evo Morales and some of his closest allies, the attorney general said on Wednesday.
“A new case has been opened against the ex-authorities for electoral fraud,” said Juan Lanchipa.Morales was controversially awarded victory at October’s election despite a highly suspicious 24-hour freeze in the live vote count, after which his lead over nearest challenger Carlos Mesa had jumped significantly.An audit by the Organization of American States found clear evidence of vote rigging.After three weeks of at times violent protests against Morales’s re-election, the 60-year-old resigned on November 10 and fled abroad.October’s election was annulled a new one called for May 3 by interim President Jeanine Anez.Former president Mesa brought the case against Morales, accusing him of falsifying and altering documents, blocking electoral processes and concealing results.Following Morales’s resignation, the six members of the electoral tribunal were arrested. Five are currently in jail and the sixth under house arrest.Mesa says the investigation against them is inconclusive because it “doesn’t take into consideration the intellectual authors” of the fraud.The case against Morales and his associates — former vice president Alvaro Garcia and ex-ministers Juan Ramon Quintana, Hector Arce and Carlos Romero — has been brought so that “never again a president of the state, abusing his power, makes a mockery of the public’s vote,” said Mesa’s lawyer, Carlos Alarcon.He said it was “inadmissible” that only the six magistrates had been investigated when “they didn’t act for their own benefit.””They acted for the benefit of the ex-president Morales and the leadership of his government.”Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president who ruled for almost 14 years, is already under investigation for sedition and terrorism over an audio recording in which he allegedly urges his supporters to lay siege to La Paz and other major cities.The former trade union leader has been barred from standing for president in May’s general election — Bolivia’s constitution limits a president to two successive terms, while Morales ruled for three in a row.His Movement for Socialism party has nominated him to stand for a berth in the Senate but the electoral tribunal — which has been entirely replaced since he left power — is studying his eligibility.
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DESSOURCES, HAITI – Farmhand Celavi Belor has lost so much weight over the past year his clothes hang limply off his angular frame.“Sometimes I go two or three days without eating,” the 41-year-old said as he looked up from hoeing a rocky field in the mountains of northwestern Haiti.Farmhand Celavi Belor, 41, a father of five children, pauses from work in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.The only food Belor, his wife and five children had to eat the day before was cornmeal, and now the only food left in their mud shack is a shriveled green chili and some stale beans.“My biggest worry is one day I just won’t be able to get up anymore,” he said, his eyes sunken and unfocused.While Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity, drought has ravaged harvests for the last few years, worsening food shortages and raising prices.The northwest, one of the Caribbean nation’s most remote and impoverished regions, has suffered the most.A collapse in the gourde currency has put imported food, which supplies more than half the country’s needs, out of reach for many Haitians like Belor, who earns just $0.40 a day when he can find the work.Compounding that, anti-government protests sparked by anger over alleged corruption shuttered businesses and public institutions for three months last fall and disrupted the transportation of goods, including food aid.By further stoking inflation and squeezing incomes, the peyi lock, as the standstill was known in Creole, has tipped Haiti into a new hunger crisis.Third of Haitians need foodOne in three Haitians, about 3.7 million people, needs urgent food assistance, up from 2.6 million people at the end of 2018, the United Nations said in December. Haiti now ranks 111 out of 117 countries on the Global Hunger Index, in the company mostly of the poorest sub-Saharan African countries.If immediate action is not taken, by next month 1.2 million people will only be able to eat one meal every other day in the Caribbean nation, the United Nations has warned.Frena Remorin, 30, (seated) cooks bananas in the improvised kitchen in the yard of her house in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.“No one has eaten yet today but if I feed my kids too early in the day they are hungry by night and cannot sleep,” said Frena Remorin, 30, who lives down the road from Belor in the district of Dessources.Sitting on a stool peeling manioc and bananas to boil over a charcoal fire, Remorin is struggling to find work washing clothes because few people have the money to spend.“I don’t have enough money now for two meals a day,” she said.Political instabilityDonors who had hoped Haiti could rebuild as a successful nation after the country’s devastating 2010 quake have been frustrated by the political instability and bad governance hampering development efforts.With no authorized government or budget, Haiti now is not allowed to access certain funds from international organizations earmarked for it, further hindering its ability to respond to the food crisis. Foreign aid to Haiti’s public coffers, which leapt after 2010, halved last year.FILE – Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise speaks with Reuters, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Nov. 15, 2019.President Jovenel Moise is struggling to negotiate a power-sharing agreement to break the political gridlock. In the meantime, local authorities make do.“This is the first time we’ve had it this bad,” said Dessources district leader Jean Jacques Lebeau, 60, who receives $45 per month from the central government to help around 12,000 households.Self-sufficientIt wasn’t always like this. Haiti was largely food self-sufficient until the 1980s, when at the encouragement of the United States the country started loosening restrictions on crop imports and lowered tariffs, then imported surplus U.S. crops, a decision that put Haitian farmers out of business and contributed to investment tailing off.Add to this the effects of climate change: Haiti regularly tops the ranks of most vulnerable nations. This is because it is part of an island in the Caribbean, where hurricanes are getting stronger, but also because it has little infrastructure or resilience.The real impact of the crisis will show in six months or so as malnutrition sets in, experts like Cédric Piriou, Haiti Country Director of Action Against Hunger, say.Infant mortality already appears to be rising.“If we had four children suffering malnutrition die before, now these last few months it has been six to eight,” said Margareth Narcisse, 57, a doctor on the medical board of St Damien Pediatric’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital city.The impoverished slums of the capital are, together with the Northwest, the areas worst affected by hunger.Dorvil Chiloveson, 3, swollen with edema, is watched over by his mother Linda Julien, 20, in the malnutrition ward at St. Damien Pediatric Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 29, 2020.In the malnutrition ward, 3-year-old Dorvil Chiloveson lies on his side in a cot. He is suffering from severe protein malnutrition, known as kwashiorkor: his tiny body is swollen with edema, with patches of skin discolored and showing raw flesh.“We couldn’t go sell our harvest during peyi lock so we lost it,” said his grandmother Marise Rose Dor, 41, who lives on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.After they ate their crop, all they could afford was rice with bananas from the garden. Instead of buying drinking water, they used a local spring they know is likely to be contaminated because of the absence of a sewage system in Haiti.Many families told Reuters they could no longer afford tablets to clean the water or charcoal to boil it.Helicopter aidThe U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which alongside other international organizations assists Haiti’s most needy, has scaled up operations in response to the crisis, distributing more food, and cash. Given the resurgence of gang violence plaguing the roads, it has also arranged for a helicopter to transport staff, other humanitarian workers and light cargo.The WFP estimated in November it needed $72 million to fund this emergency assistance to 700,000 Haitians for eight months.On Wednesday it said it had raised only $19 million so far.“Why should we bail the authorities out if they helped create this crisis?” one Haiti-based European diplomat asked, adding that politicians were not being held accountable. “How do we change that so that they don’t hurt people when they are going hungry?” Humanitarian workers — and Haitians — beg the world not to turn a blind eye to the immediate suffering.In Dessources, Belor, who cannot afford schooling in a country where about 80% of education is private, says his children are pale and listless.In the past, at least they could rely on the mango and breadfruit trees if they could not afford to buy food. But thanks to the drought, these trees are no longer producing.Belor no longer even worships at his Baptist church because he cannot afford the clothes he feels he needs to attend.“I live without hope,” he said.
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Federal prosecutors said Thursday they are taking charge of the investigating into a shooting in the German city of Hanau that left 11 people dead, including the suspect, amid reports that he may have had a far-right motive.The Federal Prosecutors Office in Karlsruhe, which handles serious crimes, said it planned to hold a news conference later Thursday.German news agency dpa reports that police are examining a video the suspect may have posted online several days earlier in which he details a conspiracy theory about child abuse in the United States. The authenticity of the video couldn’t immediately be verified.Nine people were killed at two hookah bars overnight. Police later said they found the suspected shooter and another person dead at a house not far from the second bar.Forensics officers investigate at the scene after a shooting in central Hanau, Germany, Feb. 20, 2020. Several people were killed in shootings in Hanau on Wednesday evening, authorities said.A spokesman for Hanau prosecutors, Markus Jung, confirmed the death toll but declined to comment on the reported video, or provide details of the suspect or victims.“We don’t believe there were further attackers,” Jung told The Associated Press.Officers sealed off and searched the apartment in Hanau’s Kesselstadt district, near the scene of one of the shootings, after following up witness statements on a getaway car. Police said work to confirm the identities of the two bodies at the home was still underway, and they couldn’t immediately give details on them or the identities of the victims of the earlier shootings.“Thoughts this morning are with the people of Hanau, in whose midst this terrible crime was committed,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said on Twitter.“Deep sympathy for the affected families, who are grieving for their dead,” the spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “We hope with those wounded that they will soon recover.”Earlier Thursday, police said that eight people were killed and around five wounded. They said a dark vehicle was seen leaving the location of the first attack and another shooting was reported at a scene about 2½ kilometers (1½ miles) away.Police officers swarmed central Hanau, cordoning off the area of one of the shootings as a helicopter hovered overhead. A car covered in thermal foil also could be seen, with shattered glass next to it. Forensic experts in white overalls collected evidence.Hookah lounges are places where people gather to smoke flavored tobacco from Middle Eastern water pipes.“This was a terrible evening that will certainly occupy us for a long, long time and we will remember with sadness,” Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky told the Bild newspaper. Lawmaker Katja Leikert, a member of Merkel’s center-right party who represents Hanau in the German parliament, tweeted that it was “a real horror scenario for us all.”Hanau is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Frankfurt. It has about 100,000 inhabitants and is in Hesse state.
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The European Union’s first post-Brexit summit Thursday in Brussels promises to be a contentious one. The subject is money — how to fill a nearly $65 billion budget gap left by Britain’s departure from the bloc. The EU’s 27 remaining members came together during Brexit negotiations, but that may not be the case in this new post-Brexit reality, with the departure of one of the EU’s biggest contributors.  ‘The Brexit gap’“What we call the Brexit gap — that’s estimated to be around 60 billion over seven years. So that leaves a hole of approximately 10 billion every year,“ said Marta Pilati, a policy analyst for the European Policy Center, a Brussels research group.  “One of the most contentious issues is that as a consequence of Brexit, the budget should be smaller,”  Pilati said, “or whether it should be maintained at the same level and thus allow more funding for the 27 member states.”Draft proposals are also getting pushback from richer EU countries, which argue they will shoulder too much of the financial burden. Meanwhile, poorer member states, many from central and eastern Europe, worry they will lose key development funds.  In France, the EU’s biggest agricultural producer, farmers said they were worried about cuts to the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy, the biggest budget item.  Climate change funding?And some new areas of EU emphasis, including defense, research and innovation, and Europe’s coming “Green Deal” to fight climate change, could face less funding than expected.  “Because of course it’s easier to cut the budget of things that don’t exist yet, rather than cut the budget of programs that have been around for a very long time, and over which member states have very strong interests,” Pilati said.Some observers like Pilati believe this one-day summit may stretch into two days and possibly more, as countries try to resolve their differences.
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Canadian police said Wednesday that sudden whiteout conditions most likely triggered a massive pileup involving about 200 vehicles south of Montreal. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but Quebec provincial police said about a dozen people were sent to hospitals with minor to serious injuries after the midday crash in La Prairie, Quebec. Firefighters from La Prairie said two people were still trapped Wednesday afternoon, and authorities were trying to stabilize a diesel spill before extracting them from the wreckage. Those two people were considered to be in serious condition. The crash occurred around 12:30 p.m. on a stretch of Highway 15 that runs along the St. Lawrence River. The pileup of vehicles stretched for about a kilometer. Strong windsTransport Minister Francois Bonnardel told reporters in Quebec City the pileup took place in an area where heavy winds come off the river, creating sudden blizzard-like conditions. “People were driving, there were strong winds … and, suddenly, you couldn’t see anything,” Bonnardel said. ”And then, well, the pileup started.” Two snow removal operations took place in the area in the hour before the incident, he noted. Bonnardel said the highway isn’t known for particular safety issues and 65,000 vehicles use the southbound part of it daily. The transport minister said he’d await the results of an investigation before deciding if any measures needed to be taken. Dozens need towingPolice spokesman Sergeant Stephane Tremblay said about 50 vehicles were able to drive away from the collision, but 75 others would need to be towed. Numerous vehicles were mangled, including several large trucks. About 150 people were taken by bus to a nearby community center for treatment and to be picked up. Tremblay said police crash experts would study what caused the pileup. A school bus was also involved in the pileup, but none of the high school students on board were injured, said Andree Laforest, the province’s acting public security minister. 
 
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Across parts of southern England and Wales, families were watching anxiously midweek to see if major rivers break their flood barriers. Heavy rain is forecast for counties that have already been flooded thanks to torrential downpours brought on by two by massive storms in quick succession.A four-day deluge could turn already swollen rivers even more dangerous, forecasters and locals fear. Britain’s Environment Agency’s executive director, John Curtin, said Wednesday:  “We expect further disruptive weather into Wednesday and Thursday, bringing a significant flood risk to the West Midlands, and there are flood warnings in place across much of England.”A man uses a plank of wood to paddle a kayak on flood water after the River Wye burst its banks in Ross-on-Wye, western England, on February 17, 2020, in the aftermath of Storm Dennis.But the unprecedented floods that have hit southern England, and now threatening damage further north, too, are not only wrecking homes and properties, but also the reputation of a government that was only elected into office just two months ago, say analysts.Furious locals hit by extreme floods are slamming  Prime Minister  Boris Johnson  for having failed to visit communities worst affected by the storms. Thousands have been evacuated. Even so, Mr. Johnson and the most senior ministers have not pulled on their waders to get out and about to empathize and console.It is now as common on the drenched frontlines to hear the refrain, “Where’s Boris?” as it is to hear the query, “What’s the forecast?”A man cleans mud from the street in Pontypridd in south Wales, Feb. 16, 2020.In the Welsh town of Pontypridd — where 600 people have been displaced — Robin Williams, 62, asked journalists:  “Where’s Boris? Where’s the help?” Another Pontypridd homeowner, Tracey Waites, 49, told reporters,  “We haven’t seen anyone. There are no politicians down here helping. Where are they?”The local MP, Labour’s Alex Davies-Jones, has dubbed Mr. Johnson  “the Scarlet Pimpernel,” adding,  “You can never find him in an emergency.”For several commentators the absence of the prime minister is even more inexplicable considering this is not the first time Mr. Johnson has been slow off the mark when it comes to natural disasters and even flooding. In December, he was heckled during the election campaign for visiting belatedly storm-wracked communities in the north of England.Regularly ‘updated’
Mr. Johnson  is also facing growing criticism for failing to convene the government’s emergency Cobra committee, a cross-departmental panel normally called to respond to a national crisis or potential one. As historic towns battled unprecedented floodwaters destroying lives and livelihoods, Mr. Johnson remained working at a government mansion in Kent with no plans to visit communities worst-hit by the storm.FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Dec. 17, 2019.A Downing Street spokesman said Mr. Johnson did not need to visit as he is being “updated” regularly.   And the environment minister, George Eustice, said the government had a  “firm grip” on the situation. But those responses were being scorned Wednesday by locals affected by the floods as well as by a swelling chorus of local  MPs.Fresh off a major general election victory in December — one that is reshaped the electoral map of Britain — Mr. Johnson seemed destined for a long honeymoon period. He was king of all he surveyed and armed with a large parliamentary majority he was able finally to conclude the long-running first phase of Britain’s tumultuous exit from the European Union, securing passage in the House of Commons of a contentious withdrawal agreement, an approval that had evaded his predecessor in Downing Street, Theresa May.Tightening his iron grip on the ruling Conservatives, he is been able without danger to purge his cabinet of potential challengers and to avoid bringing into his government from Conservative ranks other major political figures who might cause him problems.FILE – Government Cabinet Minister Sajid Javid arrives for a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Oct. 10, 2017.Last week, his Chancellor of the Exchequer,  Sajid Javid, resigned rather than be reappointed without the right to name his own advisers, a Mr. Johnson precondition for him to continue as Britain’s finance minister. A less secure Prime Minister would have been nervous to lose a heavyweight from his cabinet, one who could all too easily serve as a rallying point for internal party dissent, say analysts.But the government’s handling of this week’s floods appear to have washed out Mr.  Johnson’s honeymoon, bringing it to a premature close.  The criticism is coming not just from his usual detractors in the opposition parties. Johnson-supportive tabloid newspapers the Daily Mail and Sun have been pointing out that the frustration is high even in constituencies that voted for Brexit and backed Mr. Johnson to become Conservative leader.  
   
And a series of other gaffes and mishaps — as well as a likely looming bad-natured clash with the EU over future relations — has left some questioning about the competency of his government and its powers of foresight.No-show at Munich conference
The question of where is Boris was being asked, too, in Munich last week at the annual security conference, which draws top leaders from around the World and secures the attendance of virtually all Europeans heads of government. This year’s conference featured France’s Emmanuel  Macron,  Canada’s Justin  Trudeau, Germany’s Angela Merkel as well as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey  Lavrov. The U.S. was represented by a high level delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.FILE – Members of the international committee take their seats for a follow-up meeting on Libya, arranged by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, in Munich, Germany, Feb. 16, 2020.None of Britain’s military or intelligence chiefs attended. Nor did Britain’s foreign or defense secretaries. Mr. Johnson had been offered a speaking slot  in the coveted opening session of the conference, but turned it down. Britain only sent a junior foreign affairs minister.At the last minute, Britain’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, an un-elected official, was ordered to cut short a family vacation and fly to Munich for the conference’s final session. According to Sky News commentator,  Alistair Bunkall, “a small cheer went up in the media center when he was introduced.” Bunkall reported that a conference organizer told Sedwill, “It’s great you’re here but it would have been even greater if others from your government were present.” Britain’s absence was noticed by others, too.Some of the blame for what commentators and Opposition MPs see as a mishandling of the political response to the floods — as well as the lack of representation at Munich — is being laid at the door of Mr. Johnson’s top strategist, Dominic Cummings, a firebrand populist who was the major tactician for anti-EU campaigners in the 2016 Brexit referendum.Cummings drew fire earlier this week for appointing as a political forecaster in Downing Street a 27-year-old who had a history of racist social-media comments, in which he’d argued black people are less intelligent than whites for genetic reasons. Amid a media firestorm the political forecaster quit. “Cummings has been the most visible face of No 10 in the 10 weeks since the December 2019 general election,” says Anthony Seldon, a contemporary historian and author of biographies on every British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. “He has adopted a ‘hub and poke’ model. He has tried to centralize power within No 10, over the Treasury, ministers and their advisers,” he wrote in a commentary for The Times.Seldon says part of he problem is that Mr. Johnson’s team has yet to learn that the single-minded qualities needed to get into power are different from those required in government. Once in office, he says, prime ministers “have to be diplomats, cajoling and persuading people, and not alienating them.” 
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German police say several people were shot to death in the city of Hanau on Wednesday evening.The dpa news agency reported that police said people were killed but it was not clear exactly what was behind the incident. It also was not immediately clear how many people were dead.Hanau is near Frankfurt.Regional public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk reported, without citing sources, that an attack took place in a hookah lounge in the center of the city. It said witnesses reported hearing eight or nine shots and seeing at least one person lying on the ground.The perpetrator or perpetrators then apparently went to another part of the city, where shots were fired in another hookah lounge, the broadcaster said.
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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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